Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.71 (580 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1605985201 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-10-09 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Constance, an author in her own right, a proponent of the rational dress movement, and a budding spiritualist, was, like her husband, on the cutting edge of more liberal Victorian trends. From Booklist A new trend in biography is to profile the woman behind the man. In the case of the immensely talented and tragically infamous Oscar Wilde, that woman was the beautiful, intelligent, and forward-thinking Constance Lloyd Wilde. Although Oscar’s sexual preferences were decidedly male, his marriage, in many ways, was a union of like minds and mutual resp
16 pages of B&W photographs. The most poignant narrative of fin-de-siecle London: the story of Constance and Oscar Wilde's glittering life and tragic downfall.In the spring of 1895 the life of Constance Wilde changed irrevocably.Up until the conviction of her husband Oscar for homosexual crimes, she had held a privileged place in society. Franny Moyle now tells Constance’s story with a fresh eye and remarkable new material. Part of a gilded couple, she was a popular children’s author, a fashion icon, and a leading campaigner for women’s rights. Mrs. Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in her own right. But that spring Constance’s entire life was eclipsed by scandal.Forced to flee to the Continent with her two sons, her glittering literary and political career ended abruptly. Changing her name, she lived in exile until her death. Drawing on numerous unpublished letters, she brings to life the most poignant narrative of fin-de-siecle London and the Aesthetic Movement
A Good Read A well written book on the life of Constance Wilde that kept me interested from beginning to end. That being said, there are several conclusions the author draws in the biography to which I found myself in strong disagreement. For example, Fanny Moyle states that in spite of his numerous homosexual affairs, Oscar Wilde "remained loyal and devoted to Constance". How can one be "loyal and devoted" to one's spouse while having affairs? Ms. Moyle continues to mention Oscar's loyalty to Constance (until he was convicted in court) to the point that I wanted to say 'enough alread. brilliant take on Wilde Here is a wonderful book about the world of Oscar and Constance Wilde that rescues him from queer icon status and restores a bit of much needed balance. Their marriage and the inspiration it offered both Oscar and Constance is a great and overlooked subject in the world of Wildeana. It makes him a far more interesting figure; and the editor of Woman's World, no less who would have thought? The skill of this book is how vividly that relationship is drawn, and the shared ambitions they had in turning Oscar into a phenomenon, almost a 'brand'. there's a whiff of Maclaren and . A Look At Oscar Wilde's Better Half Constance Lloyd may well have been relegated to shadowy figure status had this book not been written. The one and only wife of writer Oscar Wilde and an accomplished woman in her own right, to my knowledge this is the first book dedicated to Constance's brief and increasingly difficult life.Authoress Franny Moyle was given access to Wilde family letters and pictures and has managed to flesh out and detail Constance's life in greater detail than I would have expected. Though often portrayed in a sympathetic light and rightfully so as Constance was a far more sensitive and c
. She was a leading arts producer at the BBC, which culminated in her becoming the corporation's first Commissioner for Arts and Culture, and is now a freelance writer in London. Franny Moyle has a degree in English and History of Art from St John's College, Cambridge, and is the author of Desperate Romantics