The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. – Review – book review
Sarah E. Chinn
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis, editors (Henry Holt, $45) This is a must for any Wilde lover: scrupulously edited, meticulously footnoted, and big, big, big. We see Oscar move from excited schoolboy to impressionable tourist in Europe prior to his great triumphs and terrible defeats. Even though many of his friends burned his letters after his conviction (to escape their own possible incrimination), hundreds remained. A particularly tasty treat: the entire 1897 cri de coeur to Alfred Douglas that became Wilde’s masterpiece De Profundis–a mind-blowing combination of recrimination, penitence, and self-examination.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
