Please note: I first published this book review on the “Goodreads”-website in 2023.
My rating: 4 (of 5) “stars”
I bought a used copy online, at AbeBooks or zvab.com – I can’t remember. The book was first published privately in 1902, I bought a copy which was published in 1908.
Robert H. Sherard, who wrote this biography of Oscar Wilde, was a friend of Wilde’s, and he paints a favourable portrait of his friend, but also writes about their falling-out at the end of Wilde’s life.
Sherard writes about Wilde’s trial, but only alludes to the reason for this trial. He refers to Wilde’s “aberration,” and it’s easy to fill in the gaps, but it’s still strange to read a biography about a writer in which everything that matters is left unsaid.
The book was first published as a privately printed edition in 1902; Sherard chose this “discreet method of publication” so as “to afford no opportunity by causing a public revival of attention to his name, for those unjust reprisals upon his kinsfolk to which humanity, in this, as in every similar case, needs but the pretext of an incitement.” This prefatory note to the first edition was re-printed in the first popular edition, published in 1908, of which I own a copy.
I think it’s interesting that but six years after he offered a privately printed edition for sale to a small circle of readers, this consideration no longer seemed to apply. Had public opinion changed so much in just a few years? Or did he no longer care about causing distress to Wilde’s family? Did Sherard long for a best-seller? Or had Wilde’s name been rehabilitated by then? I think those are the best books – the ones that make you ask questions long after you’ve finished reading them, and you want to know more. This is one of those books.