The Oxford Handbook of Oscar Wilde: (Oxford Handbooks)

The Oxford Handbook of Oscar Wilde puts Wilde the Icon into an expansive literary and dramatic context. It offers a readable guide to Wilde studies for the early twenty-first century. Its chapters reflect Wilde's status as a queer writer while filling in the gaps that this focus have left and looking forward to the next generation of critical studies on Wilde. It is designed to appeal to students and those with a general interest in Wilde, as well as professional academics. Its comprehensive discussions of his writings show how these interact with, and transfigure, both their age and his life, while providing readers with clear and extensive suggestions on approaches to reading, thinking, and writing about them. It is organized in four sections: Places, Works, Intellectual Contexts, and Reception. The first section on Places tells the story of Wilde's life and intellectual evolution through the places that defined its contours: Dublin, Oxford, London, America, France, and Italy. The second section on Wilde's Works provides new and in-depth directions to close reading Wilde's writing, with generative ideas on the development, style, structure, and significance of each of his major works. The section on Intellectual Contexts brings together chapters on the main ideas and cultures of thought that shaped Wilde's thinking, from late-nineteenth century sexuality and fashion to the ancient world and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The final section on Reception focuses on the central categories in which Wilde's works and life have been read and influenced cultural movements since his death. Wilde's afterlife has been vibrant and chapters in this section include discussions of how he influenced camp and pop, alongside the contentious textual history of his works.

Table of Contents:
Kate Hext and Alex Murray: Introduction: Wilde Variety The Life 1: Jarlath Killeen: Ireland 2: Alex Murray: Oxford 3: Kate Hext: America 4: Nick Freeman: London 5: Joseph Bristow: The Trials 6: Peter Stoneley: Prison 7: Elisa Bizzotto: Exile in France and Italy The Works 8: Kostas Boyiopoulos: Early Poems 9: Deaglán Ó Donghaile: Vera and 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' 10: Mark Turner: The Journalism 11: Dustin Friedman: The Portrait of Mr W.H. and the short fiction 12: Caroline Sumpter: Fairy Tales 13: Josephine M. Guy: Intentions 14: Giles Whiteley: The Picture of Dorian Gray 15: Matthew Potolsky: The Picture of Dorian Gray in Context--Aestheticism, Imperialism, and Capitalism 16: Petra Dierkes: Salome 17: Sos Eltis: Lady Windermere's Fan 18: Anne Varty: A Woman of No Importance 19: Greg Mackie: An Ideal Husband 20: Francesca Coppa: The Importance of Being Earnest 21: Matthew Bradley: De Profundis 22: John Stokes: The Ballad of Reading Gaol Intellectual Contexts 23: Shushma Malik: Classical Rome 24: Alastair Blanshard: Classical Greece 25: Richard Hibbitt: Wilde and France 26: Margaret D. Stetz: Wilde and Women 27: Lindsay Wilhelm: Evolution 28: Simon Joyce: Wilde and Sexuality 29: Dominic Janes: Wilde and Fashion 30: Dennis Denisoff: Wilde and the Natural World 31: Wilde and the Visual Arts Reception 32: Rebecca N. Mitchell: Textual History 33: Di Cotofan Wu: Wilde in East Asia 34: Robert Stilling: Wilde in Africa and the Caribbean 35: Kristin Mahoney: Wilde and Camp 36: Neil Sammells: Wilde and Pop Culture

About the Author :
Kate Hext is Associate Professor in Decadent Literature and the Arts at the University of Exeter and Visiting Professor of English at Ewha Womans University. Her published work includes Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies (2024) and a new edition of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (2025). She is a founding co-editor of the journal Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures. Alex Murray is Professor of Modern Literature at Queen's University Belfast and founding co-editor of Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures (Johns Hopkins University Press). His most recent books include Decadent Conservatism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Past (Oxford University Press, 2023) and the collection Decadence: A Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Review :
The volume offers not merely a comprehensive survey of current Wilde scholarship, but also a fascinating reâstaging of Wilde's life as performance, as dramaturgy, as aesthetic construction. ...the Handbook represents an important contribution to Wilde studies that will surely prove a useful reference point for years to come.