The book
THE DEFINITIVE STUDY OF OSCAR WILDE’S POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION, WRITTEN BY WILDE’S ONLY GRANDSON
Oscar Wilde died in November 1900, exiled in Paris and exhausted by scandal and prison life. The details of his life in the limelight are well known; what have regularly been ignored are the reverberations of the scandal for decades after his death.
With pathos, humour, and his grandfather’s signature wit, Holland charts the extraordinary afterlife of the legendary writer and thinker, and traces the dramatic fluctuations in Wilde’s posthumous reputation over the past 125 years. A true feat of storytelling and scholarship, After Oscar tells the story of Oscar’s wife Constance and his sons Cyril and Vyvyan; his lovers, friends, and enemies; the afterlife of De Profundis; sightings from beyond the grave; the fate of the Wilde estate; and Oscar’s contemporary status as a gay icon.
One of the most important works on Wilde in over fifty years, After Oscar exposes decades of sensationalist conjecture surrounding the Wilde family, and documents a century of homophobia within the British establishment. Illuminating and heartbreaking, Holland has written a book that will amuse, infuriate, fascinate, and shock. Readers beware—you’re in for a Wilde ride.
The author
Merlin Holland
Merlin Holland, the only grandson of Oscar Wilde, is an author living in France. For the last forty years he has been researching his grandfather's life and works, and writes, lectures, and broadcasts regularly on the subject in English, French, and German. His publications include Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first complete, verbatim record of the libel trial which ultimately brought Wilde to ruin, and The Wilde Album, a pictorial biography of Oscar Wilde. He is also the co-editor of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde as well as the editor of an abridged and commentated version of Oscar’s letters, Oscar Wilde: a Life in Letters.
After Oscar's conviction in 1895, his wife, Constance, and their two sons were forced to move abroad and change their name to Holland. The family has never reverted to the name Wilde.