Letters of Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (1890-1895)

These letters blaze with the confidence of a man at the peak of his powers, yet smolder with the prescient dread of one sensing his own destruction. This volume captures Oscar Wilde during his most triumphant and most dangerous years: the years of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, when he commanded London's literary scene while conducting the affair that would later be read aloud in court as evidence of his ruin. The correspondence includes his spirited defenses against censorship, his ornate love letters to Lord Alfred Douglas that read as prose poems, and the gradual darkening of tone as fortune turns. Some letters have been excerpted from auction catalogues, newspapers, and biographies. What makes this collection essential is not merely its biographical value, but its literary electricity: Wilde's prose even in private correspondence crackles with wit, desire, and an almost reckless candor that we now read with the terrible knowledge of where it all led.