CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction iii
I. Oscar’s Father and Mother on Trial 1
II. Oscar Wilde as a Schoolboy 23
III. Trinity, Dublin: Magdalen, Oxford 37
IV. Formative Influences: Oscar’s Poems 50
V. Oscar’s Quarrel with Whistler and Marriage 73
VI. Oscar Wilde’s Faith and Practice 91
VII. Oscar’s Reputation and Supporters 102
VIII. Oscar’s Growth to Originality About 1890 112
IX. The Summer of Success: Oscar’s First Play 133
X. The First Meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas 144
XI. The Threatening Cloud Draws Nearer 156
XII. Danger Signals: the Challenge 175
XIII. Oscar Attacks Queensberry and is Worsted 202
XIV. How Genius is Persecuted in England 229
XV. The Queen vs. Wilde: The First Trial 261
XVI. Escape Rejected: The Second Trial and Sentence 292
VOLUME II
[Transcriber’s Note: Volume II is also available on Project Gutenberg.]
XVII. Prison and the Effects of Punishment 321
XVIII. Mitigation of Punishment; but not Release 345
XIX. His St. Martin’s Summer: His Best Work 363
XX. The Results of His Second Fall: His Genius 406
XXI. His Sense of Rivalry; His Love of Life and Laziness 433
XXII. “A Great Romantic Passion!” 450
XXIII. His Judgments of Writers and of Women 469
XXIV. We Argue About His “Pet Vice” and Punishment 488
XXV. The Last Hope Lost 509
XXVI. The End 532
XXVII. A Last Word 542
Shaw’s “Memories” 1-32
THE APPENDIX, 549
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME I
Oscar Wilde at About Thirty Frontispiece
Facingpage
Dr. Sir William Wilde
22
Oscar Wilde at Twenty-Seven, as He First Appeared in America 75