Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions

Description

Known for his plays and short stories just as much as for his biographies, Frank Harris created a true masterpiece with Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. Harris was not only a contemporary of Wilde, but also a close friend – a friend so close, as a matter of fact, that Wilde dedicated one of his best plays, An ideal Husband to Harris -, so what the readers now have in their hands with this book is indeed an intimate account of Wilde’s life.

Harris was one of the few who stayed loyal to Wilde after he had been sentenced to prison in 1895 and stood by him after his release in 1897 and the book celebrates this friendship by aptly conjuring the image of one of the wittiest writers and conversationalists of all times: Oscar Wilde. The book interprets the genre of biography in a way of its own: it is not so much an account of Wilde’s day to day life as an account and a description of Wilde’s spirit, wit and unique ways of seeing his contemporaries and things in life.

The biography is written in a novelistic style that probably drew much inspiration from Wilde’s masterpiece, The Picture of Dorian Grey. Being more of a novel than a biography, the book has been often criticized for not giving an account of Wilde’s life based on documented facts, as well as for taking and presenting anecdotes and hearsay as facts. Even so, Harris’ Confessions has numerous, undeniable merits: it presents the reader with a close-up on Oscar Wilde, the man, more vividly than anyone else and portrays him in a more loving, respectful and understanding, but at the same time more critical manner than any other biographer of Oscar Wilde, pointing out his flaws and his qualities as well.
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