ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that Oscar Wilde has probably been written about more than most nineteenth-century writers, his place and reputation continue to be uncertain. Wilde’s extraordinary personality and wit have so dominated the imaginations of most biographers and critics that their estimates of his work have too often consisted of sympathetic tributes to (or attacks on) a writer whose literary production was little more than a faint reflection of his brilliant talk or the manifestation of what a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement (No. 92) called his ‘lawlessness’. Characteristic is Richard Le Gallienne’s opening remark in his introduction to The Works of Oscar Wilde (New York, 1909): ‘The writings of Oscar Wilde, brilliant and even beautiful as they are, are but the marginalia, so to say, of a striking fantastic personality.’ Indeed, Wilde’s remark-as reported by André Gide-that he had put his genius into his life and only his talent into his art has provided support to those who regard his life as the primary object of interest.
