Oscar Wilde

A Life

By: Matthew Sturgis

Narrated by: John Pirkis

Length: 34 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

The fullest, most textural, most accurate - most human - account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life - based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life.

"Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." (Evening Standard)

Drawing on material that has come to light in the past 30 years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it.

Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority...his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere"...his 10-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of 39...Wilde's development as a playwright...becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes...his celebrity...and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another - double - life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.

©2021 Matthew Sturgis (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

“Exhaustively researched, enlightening and lively . . . The story of the man in full, with flaws and fine qualities almost equally balanced . . . Sturgis does not pretend to be a critic—one of his gripes against Ellmann is that he approached his biography as a literary critic rather than a historian—and he does not essay any overarching judgments. Instead he delivers the judgments of Wilde’s own day: ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ turns out to have been by far the most popular of Wilde’s works during his own lifetime, a fact I found surprising. The opinions of Wilde’s more perceptive contemporaries can make us think.”—Brooke Allen, Wall Street Journal 

“Give yourself a present: Pick up a copy of Oscar Wilde: A Life . . . Sturgis’s biography is now the fullest one-volume account of the iconic fin-de-siècle writer, aesthete, wit and gay martyr. It draws on the most up-to-date manuscript discoveries and scholarship, but deliberately sticks closely to Wilde’s life.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post  

Amazing and troubling story

Have always appreciated Wilde and his sardonic humor. This was a compelling tale on so many levels on him, society and being gay.
But, in the end the tragedy and callous treatment and utter destruction of his wife and sons by him is utterly the most devastating aspect. I can forgive, empathize all, but that destruction by him of these innocents

Brilliant portrait of the loveable, tragic dandy

This is one of those audiobooks I never wanted to end. It is superb in every way. A few highlights: (1) the author unfolds Wilde's aestheticism (and its sources in Keats, Ruskin, Swinburne, etc.), and his creative accomplishments, with patience, care, and deep understanding, I was surprised to learn both of Wilde's brilliant Oxford career, and his deep roots in, and commitment to, Irish culture; (2) the story of Wilde's 1882 American lecture tour is a rollicking and vastly enjoyable romp--the scenes of Wilde, the quintessential stylish dandy, he of the white lily and beribboned slippers, dining with miners deep in a Colorado silver mine, and bringing the gospel of aestheticism to every whistle-stop town in the Midwest--hilarious and unforgettable; (3) the tragic period of Wilde's life--the excesses, self-indulgence, even selfishness, and the increasing recklessness of his sexual behavior--culminating in the tragic downfall of his trial, conviction, and sentence to imprisonment with hard-labor--and the final, lonely, melancholy years in Paris--all this is presented by the author in great detail, very frankly, and based on copious and up-to-date research. Finally, the narration by John Pirkis is wonderful, first-rate--one of those top-tier narrators who do their work so well your attention is never distracted from the content.

I didn’t know.…

Many inchoate impressions of OW were wonderfully fleshed out by this comprehensive review of this culture revolutionaries’ life. Examples: his advocacy for his home country; his socialist sentiments; loved US travel discussion; made me wish I could have experienced a conversation with him. His tragic and considered self destructive behavior was equally detailed. His suicidal compulsion to blithely ignore laws was not to become a martyr for human rights but an irrational compulsion. His legacy certainly surpasses his wildest conceptions and we are a better species because of Oscar Wilde.

Wilde Made Tame

Stultifyingly dull. I am surprised. Gave up halfway through without feeling I knew anything about the man himself and still less about his accomplishments. Probably a great dinner party guest, but not to spend 34 and a half hours with.