A Date With... Oscar Wilde
| This month we celebrate the passing of Oscar Wilde, one hundred years ago today (so long as today
is still 30th November, which no doubt it is not). Our Oscar Wilde theme will be running throughout the
month with no let up of new content stretching from the first opened window in your chocolate Advent
calendar to the terrifying realisation that another year is almost up on 31st December. We have his
novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and also the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol and his plays will
be appearing on site throughout the month. Consider us to be your very own three wise men (or rather,
in my case, one man with quite a lot of trivial knowledge) and Wilde as the star leading us to you at
this festive time. Bibliomania presents a month of Wilde Things: Wake up on the 1st of December to a brand new Well Red magazine. This month we offer you an article drawing together the life and work of Wilde with his modern counterparts / protégés Stephen Fry and Morrissey – full of their most amusing lines and provocative sayings along with details of their fascinating lives. Stephen Fry, who played the part of Oscar in the film "Wilde", is interviewed about Wilde, his favourite books and various trivial fripperies in our Interview section, and you can read all about his new book, The Stars' Tennis Balls in our Reviews sections. Elsewhere, in the Articles section, there is a brand new piece by screenwriter and novelist Oliver Francis on the growing tendency of films to be books and books to be films. Francis takes us from Henry V to "The Beach" in a tale of the incestuous love between an inky page and a silver screen. Remember what Noel Coward – comic dramatist of choice after Wilde – said about Tinseltown though: "I'm not very keen on Hollywood. I'd rather have a nice cup of cocoa really". That's the spirit. Walter Mitzer called Hollywood "A trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat". Well Red improves on such a ride as we drive a velvet snow plow through the sarcophagi of authors who are lucky enough to have anniversaries this month, with an eye out for the more ludicrous events in literary history. Yes, the stuff and nonsense that used to be found here in the Bibliomania editorial has now got its own page in the Articles section. Lock up your authors, it's "Well Dead". Henry Green, one of the authors of the twentieth century who looks like finally achieving the recognition he deserves is the subject of a new biography: Romancing. Read our review of it. If you are looking for a romantic Christmas present, you may be tempted by The Oxford Book of Sonnets - find out what our resident heart-throbs thought of it. If you are still thirsty after so many pints of the milk of human kindness, then try entering our Oscar Wilde competition. Have your witty comments read by hundreds of thousands of people next month and win some Wilde goodies with Bibliomania. |
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