HEMINGWAY FIRST NOVEL PRIZE Critical Comment: D.T. Max, New York Times Book Review: Exceptional, smart and playful, a novel of quiet seductions. An imagined correspondence between Wilde and the author that turns into a drama of cross-century friendship. Merlin Holland; author, grandson of Oscar Wilde:A charming read. Im sure Grandfather would have seen the fun of it. Hillary Hemingway; Director, Hemingway Literary Festival: What a delight to discover this unique voice. The novel is already the buzz of New York. Jill Jackson,Syndicated columnist, King Features:A brilliant correspondence, beautifully written and researched. Very funny stuff. Ellis Hanson, Author, Decadence & Catholicism:A style so conversational and amusing, it felt like Holloway was sitting at my dinner table. Postmodern parallels with Wilde abound theatre is transmogrified into TV commercials, rentboys into go-go types in a hustler bar, Reading Gaol into a psycho-prison for sexual outcasts. They make for interesting echoes and dissonances between decadence and post-modernism, aestheticism and camp, innuendo and outness, sex as gross indecency and sex as medical problem. Giovanna Franci,Professor of English, University of Bologna, Italy:What a wonderful concept! Beautifully realized! I couldnt put it down. LINER NOTES: In February of 1993, enroute from Capetown, South Africa to Los Angeles, during a lay-over at Londons Cadogan Hotel, C. Robert Holloway is convinced he witnessed the arrest of Oscar Wilde from the very room hes occupying. After badgering a reluctant night-manager, he learns that his room is indeed the same suite from which Wilde was ignominiously hauled away to Bow Street Police Station in April of 1895. Emboldened by a split of honor-bar rose and a chocolate rush, he drafts a letter to Wilde, at once part apology - part adulation - part exorcism and no small part jet-lagged foolishness. Next morning,he deposits it in a Piccadilly post-box, and shortly departs for California, never giving it a second thought. Two weeks later a thick envelope tumbles from Holloways mail-box in West Hollywood. Filling several pages, the flamboyant hand bears a strong resemblance to Wildes. Its authors observations on Holloways lineage and threadbare education are accurate enough to unnerve him, albeit momentarily. Thus begins an audacious, outrageous, occasionally trenchant, often hilarious correspondence between a little-known TV producion designer and the most famous gay man in the Western world.

Wilde’s Wiles: Studies of the Influences on Oscar Wilde and His Enduring Influences in the Twenty-First Century is a collection of essays which celebrates the diversity of Oscar Wilde’s genius. This unique collection of scholarship explores not only his influence on a broad spectrum of subjects including: aesthetics, children’s literature, women’s issues, consumer economics, queer theory, politics, theater, film, poetry, Victorianism and other aspects of culture such as pedagogical approaches to Wilde’s literature, but it also examines the influence of his family and friends on him. Wilde’s Wiles: Studies of the Influences on Oscar Wilde and His Enduring Influences in the Twenty-First Century includes a wide range of approaches and concentrations written by international experts and has a broad spectrum of subjects which will appeal to a diversity of scholars seeking original and alternative approaches to understanding Oscar Wilde. The multiplicity of interest in the topic of Oscar Wilde expands across genres, disciplines, cultures and time, this being the second century of Wilde scholarship since his untimely death in November 1900 preceding the fin-de siècle. The unique, multi-discipline approach of Wilde’s Wiles is organized in three sections: “Aesthetic Approaches,” “Friends and Family,” and “Performance and Pedagogy” and bridges philosophical, sociological, psychological, economic and literary disciplines.

This anthology examines Love's Labours Lost from a variety of perspectives and through a wide range of materials. Selections discuss the play in terms of historical context, dating, and sources; character analysis; comic elements and verbal conceits; evidence of authorship; performance analysis; and feminist interpretations. Alongside theater reviews, production photographs, and critical commentary, the volume also includes essays written by practicing theater artists who have worked on the play. An index by name, literary work, and concept rounds out this valuable resource.

Contains articles focusing on a single work of landmark British literature.

This book explores Oscar Wilde’s fascination with the eighteenth-century forger Thomas Chatterton, who tragically took his life at the age of seventeen. This innovative study combines a scholarly monograph with a textual edition of the extensive notes that Wilde took on the brilliant forger who inspired not only Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats but also Victorian artists and authors. Bristow and Mitchell argue that Wilde’s substantial “Chatterton” notebook, which previous scholars have deemed a work of plagiarism, is central to his development as a gifted writer of criticism, drama, fiction, and poetry. This volume reveals that Wilde’s research on Chatterton informs his deepest engagements with Romanticism, plagiarism, and forgery, especially in his later works. Grounded in painstaking archival research that draws on previously undiscovered sources, Oscar Wilde’s Chatterton explains why, in Wilde’s personal canon of great writers, Chatterton stood as an equal in this most distinguished company.

The Colbeck collection was formed over half a century ago by the Bournemouth bookseller Norman Colbeck. Focusing primarily on British essayists and poets of the nineteenth century from the Romantic Movement through the Edwardian era, the collection features nearly 500 authors and lists over 13,000 works. Entries are alphabetically arranged by author with copious notes on the condition and binding of each copy. Nine appendices provide listings of selected periodicals, series publications, anthologies, yearbooks, and topical works.