The Fall of the House of Wilde

October 15, 2016

In her first book, O'Sullivan sets out to place Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) within the context of a family where keen intellects, witty conversation, and literary talent were traits individually expressed but common to all. The book is at its best when covering the professional and social lives of Sir William Wilde and Lady Jane Wilde, Oscar's parents. While there is ample evidence that these eminent Irish Victorians deserve further study, they are not fleshed out here beyond the singular imposed dimension of impending ruin. The author oddly characterizes the biographical narrative of this family as an inversion of the American Dream--from riches to rags. The rise and fall of a family's fortunes is not an uncommon tale, especially after the death of its patriarch. For all of their collective brilliance and peculiarities this aspect of the Wildean story is mundane; it's what makes them common, not particular. VERDICT The author's analysis is thin and rarely achieves more than supposition or insinuation. Readers interested in Wilde and his family are better served approaching this text after reading Richard Ellmann's seminal Oscar Wilde.--Todd Simpson, York Coll., CUNY

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Starred review from May 16, 2016
O’Sullivan describes this debut as “an attempt to put Oscar in the context of his family and the family in the larger context of the history of Ireland.” Her “attempt” is a success worthy of celebration. She follows Wilde from his earliest writing efforts to his star-making lecture tour through the U.S. and Canada, then on to the triumphs of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. She also explores how Wilde’s family influenced his life and works. Included are his father, a surgeon who championed Irish culture; his mother, a “fiercely independent” poet and intellectual who died a pauper; and his older brother, a lawyer turned journalist who was destroyed by alcoholism. Then there were Wilde’s lovers, including Lord Alfred Douglas, and Wilde’s wife, Constance Lloyd, an acclaimed beauty whom O’Sullivan describes as loving, forgiving, and naive. Central to the portrait are two court cases. In one, Wilde’s father was cleared of having raped a former patient but nevertheless had his reputation destroyed. In the other, Wilde himself was found guilty of “indecent acts” and served two years in prison. O’Sullivan’s impressively comprehensive biography is equal parts political history, literary criticism, and Shakespearean tragedy.

July 15, 2016
A lively biography chronicles Oscar Wilde's unconventional Victorian family.O'Sullivan makes her literary debut with a family history of the Wildes: father William, a physician and Irish historian; outspoken poet and essayist Jane, "dubbed Ireland's Madame Roland" for her revolutionary views; Willie, their dissolute firstborn son; and, of course, Oscar (1854-1900), whose work, coterie of friends and lovers, and notorious trial for indecency comprise O'Sullivan's main focus. Family members' relationships with one another were often strained and, in the sons' adulthood, centered on money woes, a recurring theme in the biography. Jane was a rebel, but O'Sullivan does not support the assertion that she was a "soulmate" to both her sons, nor that she was, like Oscar, "a paradox--an intellectual coquette, unmarked by the stamp of her time and indifferent to public approval." On the contrary, Oscar emerges very much stamped by his artistic milieu and desperate for public approval. His trial echoed that of his father, who also incited a scandal when a lover sued him for libel; her "protracted smear campaign" provided delicious gossip for Dublin society. William died in 1876, leaving his family deep in debt. Financial troubles beset Jane for the rest of her life, forcing her to beg for money from Oscar, also dogged by debt. As a young man, the gregarious Willie seemed as brilliant as his younger brother, only kinder and more convivial. He studied law and then became a journalist, but he occupied himself with drink, courtesans, and prostitutes. Jane indulged him, all the while complaining to Oscar. O'Sullivan exuberantly recounts Willie's marriage to the redoubtable American newspaper titan Mrs. Frank Leslie, who thought the dapper Englishman (more than 15 years younger than she) would satisfy her sexually. He did not, and she divorced him. Drawing largely on published sources (biographies, letters, and the protagonists' own writings), the author weaves a brisk narrative of the family's, and Ireland's, troubles. A familiar portrait of Oscar with a fresh look at his eccentric relatives.

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Starred review from September 1, 2016
Another Oscar Wilde biography may seem supererogatory, but it isn't. Indeed, anyone interested in Wilde should find it fully as fascinating as any of its predecessors. O'Sullivan imbeds Oscar's life in the context of those of his father, William (181576); mother, Jane (182196); and brother, William (185299). Physician, archaeologist, antiquarian, and folklorist, father William contributed valuably to ophthalmology and toweringly to the recovery of Ireland's past. Translator, poet, and mythographer, Jane passionately hymned the Young Ireland movement of 1848 under the nom de plume Speranza, and later, as, simply, Lady Wilde, blazed the trail for the philosophical and comparative study of myth and religion. Brother William was a brilliant society journalist but, alcoholic and depressive, more self-destructive than Oscar. They and their luminary associates are at least as enthralling as Oscar and his entourage, and the witty public candor and individual assertiveness each of them insisted upon got them into the troubles that drained their resources and, for the men, shortened their lives. O'Sullivan saliently notes that erotic obsessions that became scandals aired in court destroyed both father William's and Oscar's careers, and she ferrets out of Oscar's writings the epistemological relativism rife in early modernist art and the culturally subversive tactics of later postmodernism. A book to be wild about.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)