Wright - Built of Books

Built of Books

H OW R EADING
D EFINED THE L IFE
OF O SCAR W ILDE

Thomas Wright

A J OHN M ACRAE B OOK /H OLT P APERBACK
H ENRY H OLT AND C OMPANY
N EW Y ORK

For my parents, Paul and Anne Marie Wright

Holt Paperbacks
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Copyright 2008 by Thomas Wright
All rights reserved.

Originally published in Great Britain in 2008 by Chatto & Windus

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wright, Thomas (Thomas Edward), 1973

Built of Books / Thomas Wright.1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-8050-9246-2

1. Wilde, Oscar, 18541900Books and reading. 2. Authors, Irish19th centuryBiography. I. Title.

PR5823.W75 2009

828' .809dc22

[B]

2008037762

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First U.S. Edition 2009

Title page and part opening illustrations by John Vassos

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

PART I
Built Out of Books

PART II
The Library

PART III
A Library of Lamentations

Front page of the Tite Street Catalogue.

Front page of the Tite Street Catalogue. (Reproduced by kind permission of Julia Rosenthal)

Annotations in Wildes copy of Aristophaness Nubes (The Clouds). (Sothebys)

Speranza painted by J. St. C. Liddell. ( British Library Board. All Rights Reserved)

Wildes father, aged around fifty. (Merlin Holland)

Wildes copy of The Iliad of Homer. (Julia Rosenthal)

Wildes Trinity College Notebooks. (William Andrews Clark Library, Los Angeles)

An undergraduates room at Magdalen in the late nineteenth century. (Julia Rosenthal)

Hermes with the Infant Dionysus by Praxiteles. (Authors Photograph)

Wilde reclining with a book. (Merlin Holland)

Aubrey Beardsleys portrait of Mrs Patrick Campbell. (Julia Rosenthal)

Robbie Ross in his early twenties. (Robert Robertson)

Inscription in Robbie Rosss copy of Earnest. (Merlin Holland)

Inscription in Speranzas copy of A Woman of No Importance. (Sothebys)

Aubrey Beardsleys caricature Oscar Wilde At Work. (Merlin Holland)

Front cover of The Illustrated Police News, May 4, 1895. ( British Library Board. All Rights Reserved)

The Htel de la Plage, Berneval. (Merlin Holland)

Wildes Brentanos book bill, December 3, 1900. (William Andrews Clark Library, Los Angeles)

Wilde in Rome in 1900. (Merlin Holland)

The Htel dAlsace in the early twentieth century. (Merlin Holland)

Every effort has been made by the author and publishers to trace the holders of copyrights in quotations and illustrations. Any inadvertent mistakes or omissions can be rectified in future editions.