Making Oscar Wilde by Michèle Mendelssohn

"He will always be with us-daring, fresh, timeless." This one the last line of Making Oscar Wilde by Michèle Mendelssohn, book, biography published by Oxford University Press.

True: Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite writers and when I think of him I don't never associate him with the problems he would have experienced later, but personally with it's aphorisms, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the De Profundis, his culture, his ability of filtering feelings, with his being snob, so that sometimes when you read his aphorisms you think: "Oscar, Oscar..."

It's like if the final part of his life would be the appendix of another person.

This kind of "dissociation," possible just with him, maybe is permitted because he enters in the heart of readers  with freshness, simplicity, pathos and profundity, portraying after all who he was, without too many masks; and sincerity after all pays. Always.

This beautiful and intriguing biography doesn't focus on the final years of the writer, but explores with great interest what made, created the character Oscar Wilde: a trip to the USA, when, once he left Oxford for London, he became the main member of the Aestheticism.

Wilde was born in a rich Irish family.
His dad and his mother were true characters as well plenty of culture.

He left soon for Oxford where he attended with great success college, being one of the most brilliant students.
He would have wanted to reach notoriety, he wanted to become someone someday.

Oscar Wilde didn't love to live in frugality. He loved luxury and excesses and this one was the main cause of worries, when he could not find, at first, any kind of work in grade to present him stability and this so-wanted richness.

Oscar Wilde, thanks to a new current of though, organized long series of lectures in the USA from 1882 to 1883.

Oh: he was enchanting once arrived in the New World sharing as the author remembers, his big charisma with everyone. He enchanted a lady reporter from the West Coast, he loved to posing languidly during his interviews, ninety-eight in total during this long trip in the USA.

Although the arrival of Oscar Wilde was saluted with great appreciation, some reporters started to report that after all he was not so original. Wilde enchanted Boston, was theatrical in Memphis, TN,  (he reached all the Southerner States) affording to the West Coast as well.
During this long trip he met  the poet Walt Whitman. This meeting changed Wilde so badly and was remembered with great affection by the same Whitman.

At the same time the new-born interviews with famous and common people tried to define this man, but...He still remained a mystery.

Was he a man or a woman? first of all.
He had a beautiful body, strong as a Greek statue, but then he acted just...differently.

Rumors started to spread.

The success of this trip in the New World meant to Oscar Wilde, once back to London a great notoriety and the successful plays that he would have created later presented him a big celebrity, fame, notoriety, richness.

Portrayed also his marriage, final phase of his existence, legal problems, jail, lost of consideration and reputation and a very sad end.


I personally found beauty this  biography because of the passion, devotion  the author put in writing this, brilliantly and with genuine heart.Mendelssohn's words resonates with importance: "He was a martyr, but he was also a man. The truth behind the legend is that he was a paradox through and through-which is to say, real, broken, flawed, and human.
The same genius and free spirit that made him special also made him vulnerable."


Oscar Wilde is one of the most beloved authors we know.
A best description of who he was, the family and social, political tissue where he grew him up in Ireland, his friends, social life, this fabulous, sometimes tiring trip to the USA will be a beautiful, different approach to a man who made the difference, creating the "Dandies," presenting to the New World the European Victorian World and Aestheticism, looked with fascination and curiosity.


Highly recommended to everyone, from students, to common people.

I thank Oxford University Press for the physical copy of this book.


Anna Maria Polidori