The Illustrated Letters of Oscar Wilde

120 years since his infamous trial for indecency, Oscar Wilde has never held greater fascinating for us. This extensive illustrated biography tells the life of Oscar Wilde through his own words - private letters, poems, plays, stories and legendary witticisms. It includes his relationships with key artists and writers of the time.

It is illustrated throughout with paintings, engravings, contemporary photographs, cartoons and caricatures of Wilde and his social circle. With illustrations and paintings by Aubrey Beardsley, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Whistler and Max Beerbohm, it is a beautiful evocation of the glittering fin de siecle world by its most fascinating wordsmith and aesthete.

The book details Wilde's ruin after the trial and its outcome. The profundity of his writing from prison and exile form an epitaph, not only to his own life, but also for the era that carelessly delighted in it.