Hesketh PearsonThe Life of Oscar WildeOscar Wilde was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854, thesecond son of William Wilde, the pioneering and distinguished ear surgeon, andJane Francesca Elgee, a clever but eccentric woman with a literary bent and acolorful political past. Oscar was sent to Portora Royal School, Enniskillen;his schooldays there must have been awkward by the sensational scandalsurrounding his father and one Mary Travers, which absorbed Dublin in 1864.Oscar studied at Trinity College, Dublin, from where he proceeded on ascholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford in October 1874. The extraordinary story of the rest of his life is, ofcourse, told in this biography, but it may be worth outlining some of itsnotable features here. Wilde achieved quite remarkable success with his plays,but only after a slow start to a literary career, which, apart from The Pictureof Dorian Gray, is undistinguished in all forms except the dramatic. Theearlier plays (A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere’s Fan, An IdealHusband) are characterized by an uncomfortable blend of melodrama and repartee,and it was only with The Importance of Being Earnest that Wilde found his truegenius. The play succeeds because in it Wilde is largely able to discipline theself-indulgent luxuriance of his style and to mobilize his wonderful gift fordialog, which delights in witty paradox. The play is a triumphant masterpieceof artificiality. Hesketh Pearson sensibly devotes much of this biography tothe presentation of Wilde the conversationalist, the man whocaptivated London society in the 1880s and early 1890s; but, equally,he relates with sympathetic economy the tragic fall of Oscar Wilde, the manwhose arrested emotional development and love of self-dramatization seem tohave lured him irresistibly toward disaster. Pearson’s The Life of Oscar Wilde first appeared in 1946,and was probably the first reliable biography produced on its subject. FrankHarris (author of the notorious My Life and Loves), who was a friend ofWilde’s, wrote a characteristically lively and untrustworthy account, andothers cashed in on the huge interest in Wilde, which developed (ironically)after his death in impoverished circumstances in Paris in 1900. Pearson managesto take a level-headed view of Wilde’s homosexuality, especially when oneconsiders the time in which he was writing — long before ‘Gay Liberation’ — andhe also had the advantage of knowing personally many of Wilde’s intimates,notably Lord Alfred Douglas himself, who was interviewed by Pearson in the1940s.Pearson’s view of Wilde is that he was widelymisrepresented, both in his own lifetime and afterwards. He sees Wilde as, insome ways, a more robust, less ‘exquisite’ character than he is often painted,and stresses his generosity and capacity for happiness. Wilde’s weaknesses, forPearson, lay in his restricted emotional development allied to extraordinaryintellectual precocity, and his self-destructive need to be center stage — evenin the dock where his exchanges with Carson (the opposing counsel) have becomelegendary for their wit and bravado. Wilde, it seems, could resist everything‘except temptation’. Hesketh Pearson was born in 1887 and educated at BedfordGrammar School. He made his living as an actor, a career interrupted by active service in the First World War, but turned to writing in1931. His other biographies include works on Gilbert and Sullivan, Dickensand Bernard Shaw. His writing is distinguished by elegance of style andacuteness of observation; his knowledge of the stage comes through very clearlyin The Life of Oscar Wilde. Notes by Perry Keenlyside