JONATHAN FRYER

This is one title in a series of short, illustrated biographies. They tell the stories of those who have shaped our present and our past, from Beethoven to Dietrich and from Einstein to Churchill. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), self-styled master of the "bon mot" turned Victorian bogeyman, was resurrected by a more liberal age as St Oscar, slayer of the dragons of pomposity, hypocrisy and cant. The big Irishman with the golden tongue had posthumously proved that the world is not black and white. His wit and paradoxes were understood as profound and moral and his best plays were recognized as gems of English comedy. As unrepentant Wildean Jonathan Fryer shows, Wilde had a genius for extremes. Only the mediocre and the tedious were excluded.