Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend » (1)

Joseph Bristow is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. His recent books include the variorum edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Fin-de-Sie'cle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s.

Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend explores the meteoric rise, sudden fall, and legendary resurgence of an immensely influential writer’s reputation from his hectic 1881 American lecture tour to recent Hollywood adaptations of his dramas. This volume reveals why, more than a hundred years after his demise, Wilde’s value in the academic world, the auction house, and the entertainment industry stands higher than that of any modern writer.