The Portrait of Mr. W. H.

by Oscar Wilde, Peter Ackroyd

Overview

Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an extremely popular Irish writer and poet who wrote in different forms throughout his career and became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the strange circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
At the turn of the 1890s, Wilde refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a license. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. Wilde reached the height of his fame and success with The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781843910312
Publisher:	Hesperus Press
Publication date:	08/01/2003
Series:	Hesperus Classics
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.34(d)

About the Author

Date of Birth:

October 16, 1854

Date of Death:

November 30, 1900

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

The Royal School in Enniskillen, Dublin, 1864; Trinity College, Dublin, 1871; Magdalen College, Oxford, England, 1874

Editorial Reviews

Mr W.H. is the anonymous person to whom Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets. Scholars have speculated for centuries on the identity of this man or woman. Wilde proposes that the love poems were dedicated to a very young actor named Willie Hughes, which implies that the Bard had a thing for young boys. In another author's hands this would be quite scandalous, but Wilde has enough humor to pull it off. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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