Oscar Wilde. Il sogno italiano (1875-1900)

I am going to be pretty hard on this book because it is misleadingly presented as offering new insights and information on Wilde's post prison dalliance in Italy with Lord Alfred Douglas. There is no real new or important information, a few quotes from Italian newspapers of the day were new to me -

One of the most pervasive myths about the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde is that prison destroyed him and that his remaining couple of years of life after release were a sorry saga of penury and ill health, leading to an early death in Paris. But as Oscar said himself, truth is never pure and rarely s Leggi tutto

Il volume, scritto dal curatore d'arte Renato Mirocco, si presenta come una raccolta di lettere interviste, resoconti dei giornali, osservazioni e scritti di colleghi e amici di Oscar Wilde, incentrandosi sulla permanenza dello scrittore inglese presso Napoli, luogo in cui egli si recò a seguito del Leggi tutto

Not what I expected but at times interesting. Predominantly original letters and articles interspersed with historical explanatory text. That text was often confusing. There was little effort to connect the photographs with the surrounding text. Kennicott's introduction sets a high bar that the book Leggi tutto

This book leaves a lot to be desired in regards to Wildean scholarship, but I did appreciate getting to read a number of Wilde's letters that I had previously not gotten a chance to see before this reading. It made me all the more look forward to Matthew Sturgis' "Oscar Wilde: A Life" which will be