Owen Dudley Edwards, a Dubliner, was initially trained in historical research by Sir Rupert Hart-Davis, who was then editing The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962). His own books include The Fireworks of Oscar Wilde (1989), and he has a biography of Oscar Wilde in preparation. He is now Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh, and is also a writer, broadcaster and theatre critic, whose first play will be staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1994.

Terence Brown holds a personal chair in the School of English in Trinity College, Dublin. He is a Fellow of Trinity College and also a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has written and edited many books. Among his publications are Louis MacNeice: Sceptical Vision (1975), Northern Voices: Poets from Ulster (1975), Ireland: a Social and Cultural History (1981, 2nd edition 1985), and Ireland’s Literature: Selected Essays (1986). He has recently published an edition of James Joyce’s Dubliners (1992), was a contributing editor of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1992), and is currently at work on a book on Yeats. He has lectured on Anglo-Irish Literature in many parts of the world.

Declan Kiberd lectures in Anglo-Irish Literature at University College, Dublin. He is author of Synge and the Irish Language (1979, second edition 1993) and Men and Feminism in Modern Literature (1985). He edited the section on Wilde in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) and has lectured on the author in more than fifteen countries. Among his other scholarly commentaries are The Students’ Annotated Ulysses (Penguin 1992) and Anglo-Irish Attitudes (Derry, 1984).

Merlin Holland, son of Vyvyan Holland and grandson of Oscar Wilde, writes, lectures and broadcasts regularly on all aspects of Wilde’s life and works. For twenty-five years he has been in the unique position, through having to administer the few remaining copyrights in Wilde’s writings (mostly letters and unpublished fragmentary manuscripts), of being in close touch with the latest academic research while presenting his grandfather to a wider general audience. He is the wine-correspondent of Country Life.

After Wilde’s conviction, his wife, Constance, and their sons were forced to change their name to Holland after being refused accommodation at a Swiss hotel. The family has never reverted to the name Wilde.

INTRODUCTION TO THE 1994 EDITION by MERLIN HOLLAND

At an international conference on Wilde in May 1993, a highly respected academic and specialist in Anglo-Irish literature put to his audience the question: ‘Is Oscar Wilde really a great writer?’ I suspect that his own mind had already been made up, for he added by way of a guideline, ‘Why do so many of those who study his works end up by calling him “Oscar” in a rather over-familiar fashion?’, as if an author worthy of serious study should make himself less accessible and behave with somewhat more decorum. It is a question which his critics have been asking repeatedly for a hundred years and for which there still seems to be no satisfactory answer.

2 3 4 5 Вперед