Oscar Wildes Paris: Legends and Legacies chronicles Wildes lifelong relationship with the French capital, the city he called "the most wonderful city in the world," and the site of his rise to literary fame, self-imposed exile, and eventual death.
Focused on the 1880s to the 1940s, editors Colette Colligan and Gregory Mackie shed light on this vibrant, transnational chapter of Wildes life and legacy. Contributors document how his relationship with the city developed in literature, journalism, and the visual arts, as well as in the citys famous cafés, bars, restaurants, hotels, and cemeteries.
This collection highlights three touchstones in the relationship between Wilde and Paris: his Parisian self-fashioning, the impact of the citys cultural scene on his career, and his legacys absorption into the myth of Paris as a place of artistic and sexual freedom.
Whether Wilde is viewed as ambitious aesthete, Francophile flāneur, or disreputable expatriate, Oscar Wildes Paris tells the story of how one mans life became intertwined with the cultural imagination of a city, and how that city, in turn, claimed him as its own.
