I read this book after visiting a couple plays and short stories of Wilde in March for the Irish in me. I tried the new Sturgis biography Oscar for about 120 pages, but the dry history just didn't capture me. I tried just a couple chapters of Ellmann's biography, and I may return to it at a later date. Instead I decided on this book because I was more interested in the artist and those books that were an influence on his life.
I found the focus on the literature with a little history/biography to spice the insights quite interesting. Is this a quality biography to truly know all of the events and relationships of Wilde's life? No. Is it filled with lots of suppositions that are stretches in regards to the information at hand? Yes. Still, it is far more interesting than most biographies that leave you without any feeling that the subject is a real person in all of their beauty and faults. Read Wilde and visit this book as a companion on the short literary career of an extraordinary bibliophile.
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An excellent book about Oscar Wilde. So much I didn't know. Clearly this author is a fan and he made me one, too. ( )

Interesting look at the books in Wilde's library and how they impacted his work, life, etc. ( )

Thomas Wright has accomplished quite a remarkable feat writing a book of close to 400 pages about the books owned and read by Oscar Wilde. Reamarkable, because not that much is known about Wilde's reading, and very little research had been conducted in that area. As the Legacy Library project at LibraryThing shows, there is considerable interest in knowing what great authors read or had in their libraries. Obvuously, as will also be relevant in the case of Oscar Wilde, owning, perusing and reading are quite different actions. Some historical figures compiled notebooks recording what books they finished reading, but no such record is available about Wilde's reading.

Oscar's books is a not merely a bibliography. Rather, it is a biography of Oscar Wilde with particular interest in the books he (may have) read, bought, collected, and, wrote. Actually, there is not much about the books he wrote. Oscar's books really focuses on the books Wilde read or may have possessed.

Spending his youth in the third quarter of the Nineteenth century, much is made of story telling, and listening to stories being told, whether from literary sources or an oral tradition. Young Oscar Wilde grew up in Ireland, and throughout his life, he remained interested in the fairytales of his ancestral homeland. Later in the book, Wilde received the then young W.B. Yeats as a visitor to his home in London. The chapters describing Wilde's youth suggest which books his mother read to him and which books were present in their home, some of which he would treasure after his tragic downfall, as he returned to his mother's home after finishing his prison sentence. Books read at that time include fairytales and the novels by Disraeli.

Oscar Wilde was not particularly careful with books. It was essential for him to own copies of books, so that he could write in them, making notes and comments in the margins. In later life, while writing essays and books, he would also apply the scissors or simply tear out pages to collect pieces he needed. Careful study of the marginalia shows that Wilde literally devoured books and used books intensively in authoring his own work. In the afterword, Wright describes some of the copies owned by Wilde and how study of the marginalia helped understand Wilde's ways of working. However, very few of the copies of books owned by Wilde have survived or are available for study.

At Oxford, Wilde read the classics, and particularly [[Benjamin Jowett]]'s "[The Dialogues of Plato] became one of Wilde's golden books (p. 85). Here his interest in reading Plato and other greek authors is outlined, and Wilde's developing interest in Greek culture. One of the most important books, to influence him lifelong, was Walter Pater's The Renaissance.

Thomas Wright goes some way to describe the cultural history of the significance of "the library" in a Victorian gentleman's home, and describes what Oscar Wilde's library may have looked like. Here, Wilde withdrew to find peace and quiet and enjoy his books. Much is made of Wilde's aesthetic enjoyment of books, and the material features of finely printed books of the last two decades of the Nineteenth century. Various chapters describe which books he owned and at which time he may have bought them, linking their content and authorship to literary figures Wilde encountered at that time and the use of the books in his own work as sources of inspiration.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Wilde's interest extended to collecting Uranian poetry,a term used to indicate poetry of more or less open homosexual nature. Oscar's books describes how Wilde obtained these books, either as gifts from their authors of through bookshops and publishers. Part of Wilde's days were filled with visiting bookshops and maintining close contact with booksellers and publishers.

Subsequent chapters describe the libel court case, which Oscar Wilde lost and which ruined him. His possessions including his library were auctioned off. No catalogue survives or ever existed, and some of the books were bought by his friends. Some of these books are noew owned by university libraries in the United States.

Imprisonment with hard labour for two years effectively meant a death sentence, as it was known at that time that most gentleman of the upper classes had but a limited time to survive after completion of such imprisonment. The terms of Wilde's imprisonment were gradually eased and he was allowed to request purchase of books. The lists with his requests have been preserved and show which books Wilde certainly read in prison. Upon his release, Wilde stayed for a while with his mother, before moving to the European continent.

Oscar's books is a touching and dramatic biography of Oscar Wilde that describes in detail which books Oscar Wilde owned and read during his lifetime, and how these books shaped his work and his fate. ( )

This is a biography of Wilde but with the differences of exploring Wilde through the books he owned, his library and the books he read through his life . it is an original, clever and very readable . The author's enthusiasm if not passion for Wilde and his search for all associations with Wilde makes for inspired research and writing . The story of the sale of Wilde's library in 1895 by auction to satisfy his creditors is sad but then his life story was poignant to the point of tragedy, because he was witty, achieved literary , social and theatrical fame and then fell through moral depravity and self deception. He lost his reputation, his place in society, destroyed his wife and harmed his children through his lies, egomania and obsessions. He paid the ultimate price of a prison sentence . Yet Wilde went on to write one of the most important pieces of prison literature, De Profundis . He was a brilliant , streaking comet and died impoverished, heartbroken and far too soon. The loss of his library was a bitter personal blow and he was inconsolable. It is interesting to read about the books that came back to Wilde in the remaining five years of his life . He was 46 when he died in Paris. This literary biography serves Wilde fans well and is a tribute to Wilde. The subtext is a guided reading list on what the educated English author of the period 1870 to 1900 would and should have read . The appendices, notes bibliography, afterword, and indexes add ballast. My copy is a hard backed edition and is beautifully illustrated by John Vassos and the photos have been traced in Wilde family archives and are a bonus. Well done, Mr Wright. ( )