Purple Passages: Sebastian Melmoth on Oscar Wilde

About this book

Wit, raconteur, writer and the first modern ‘celebrity’, Oscar Wilde cut a dazzling figure in British society of the late 19th century. His fall was cataclysmic. Imprisoned for same-sex indecencies, he was reviled and hounded from England. Moving to France, he became Sebastian Melmoth and when he died a few short years later, his legend became a ghost. In Purple Passages, the legendary ghost looks back at the life without evasion and posturing and with the same jaundiced eye that Oscar brought to bear in his literary works so that tragedy becomes comedy and life becomes art.