CULTURE

The Private Life of Oscar Wilde


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Before gifting a long-lost batch of Oscar Wilde’s intimate letters and manuscripts to the Morgan Library, the late Lucia Moreira Salles, a Brazilian philanthropist, had them painstakingly re-created for her dearest friends. Read the article HERE.

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Photographs: Marina Cicogna

Oscar Wilde (at left) and Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas in Oxford, 1893.

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Photographs: Marina Cicogna

The first page of Wilde’s earliest surviving note to Douglas. The full letter reads:

Dearest Bosie I am so glad you are better, and that you like the little card-case—Oxford is quite impossible in winter. I go to Paris next week—for ten days or so. Are you really going to the Scilly Isles? I should awfully like to go away with you somewhere—where it is hot and coloured—I am terribly busy in town—Tree rushing up to see me on all occasions—also strange and troubling personalities walking in painted pageants—Of the poem I will write tomorrow. Ever yours Oscar

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Photographs: Marina Cicogna

“Under the Balcony,” a poem published on the day of Wilde’s wedding in 1884.

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Photographs: Marina Cicogna

The manuscript of The Selfish Giant, handwritten by Wilde’s wife, Constance.