Oscar Wilde, a Critical Study

Arthur Ransome's Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study offers a vivid, intimate portrait of one of modern literature's most brilliant and controversial figures. Drawing on letters, rare editions, and firsthand recollection, it follows Wilde from his unconventional Irish upbringing and Oxford brilliance to his dazzling rise in London as poet, essayist, wit, and playwright. Along the way, it traces the making of his flamboyant public persona and the rapid success of works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salomé, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, before scandal, prosecution, imprisonment, and exile shattered his reputation. But this is more than biography. Ransome also provides a sensitive critical reading of Wilde's poetry, especially the early verse shaped by classical learning, French taste, and the influence of Pater, Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, Morris, and Rossetti. He examines Wilde's imaginative criticism in The Portrait of Mr. W. H., his social thought in The Soul of Man under Socialism, and his moral and emotional transformation in De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The result is a nuanced study of genius, style, suffering, and enduring cultural power. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.