Oscar's Books (an entirely new kind of biography!)

Published by Chatto & Windus, 2008, hardcover, illustrated, index, 370 pages, condition: as new.

A fresh and delightful examination of the character of Oscar Wilde by looking at him through the prism
of the books he read.

In an entirely new kind of biography, Oscars Books explores the personality of Oscar Wilde through his reading. For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He referred to the volumes that radically altered his vision of the world as his golden books. He gave books as gifts, often as part of his seduction campaigns of young men, and sometimes he literally ate books, tearing off corners of paper and chewing them as he read. Wildes beloved book collection was sold at the time of his trials to pay creditors and legal costs.

Thomas Wright, in the course of his intensive research, has hunted down many of the missing volumes, which contain revealing markings and personal annotations never previously examined.

How very much I loved the idea of this book! I can't imagine why no one ever thought to analyze the content of Wilde's character through the lens of his library before. I think it's brilliant!

I like the author's delicate, clear sentences, leavened with a good dose of irony, in the best Wildean tradition. He is forced to rely on supposition and probability in many places in this book...how a volume came into the subject's library, what the effect of a particular book probably was on Wilde absent concrete evidence...and that means I don't judge the book by the same standard I would an academic treatise. It's a very interesting popular biography of a very interesting popular figure told in a novel and instructive way.