Publisher's Synopsis
A fascinating blend of fact and fiction, The Oscar Wilde Double Bill offers a significant insight into one of the most important literary figures who ever lived. Born in Dublin in 1854 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Willis Wilde was educated at Oxford where he achieved a double first. His reputation as a dramatist, poet and novelist was established in only seven years; from his first short story The Happy Prince to The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. He died in Paris in 1900 ruined by a notorious libel case and two years in Reading gaol.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde - On 18th February 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry left a visiting card at the Albemarle Club on which he had written: 'To Oscar Wilde posing as a sodomite'. The accusation led to a series of three trials and the imprisonment of Wilde. This compelling dramatic recreation has been carefully compile from the original trial transcripts.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Wilde's only novel, combining sparkling wit, social satire and luxurious description. Full of many of his most famous witticisms, it shocked a generation and played an important part in Wilde's trials. Whilst touching on the theme of homosexuality, it is essentially a novel about lust for eternal youth against the inevitable reality of the ageing process.
