Oscar's Books by Thomas Wright is an innovative approach to biography. Wright delightfully and uniquely examines the character of Oscar Wilde by looking at him through the prism of the books he read. Drawing on unpublished and little-known material, an unfamiliar Wilde emerges from this book - one that is astonishingly revealing of his personality.

We spoke to Thomas Wright about his insightful look at Oscar Wilde, arguably the world's most famous homosexual.

What was it that prompted you to write Oscar’s Books?
Wilde is my hero and I have always been addicted to literary biography. I wanted to make an original contribution to that genre and to the literature on Wilde. Reading has also played a very important part in my life, so I thought it would be fun to approach Wilde through the books he read.

When did you first become interested in Oscar Wilde?
Here is the story, as it is told in the book. Twenty years ago, when I was a sixteen year old, I was browsing the shelves of a second-hand bookshop in Cambridge. The black and white spine of the ‘Oxford Authors’ edition of Oscar Wilde’s writings caught my eye and I took it down. It was cheap, I liked the sweet smell of its pages, and I knew that Wilde was a ‘Lord of Language’ because his beautiful fairy-tales had been read to me as a child. I bought the book and, later the same day, I started to read The Picture of Dorian Gray. 

By the end of the first chapter I was captivated. Wilde’s elegant prose and his agile intellect dazzled me; I was thrilled too, by his effervescent wit. I became drunk on the novel – as though it really was, to borrow a phrase from one of Wilde’s friends, the ‘champagne of literature’.

Dorian Gray offered me a portal into intellectual, literary, social and moral universes that I was ready, and eager, to enter. I had received a strict and in certain respects, a rather stifling Catholic upbringing, and my state-school education had left me almost entirely ignorant of literature and philosophy. Wilde’s musical words charmed me out of my self and I followed his pipe laughing into a brave new world. 

Like many of its first readers back in the 1890s, I was so enchanted by the novel that I read it fifteen, or perhaps even twenty, times, sometimes finishing it and beginning it again on the same day. To break the spell, or perhaps to prolong it, I turned to the other works in the ‘Oxford Authors’ volume. Nearly all of them met Wilde’s criteria of the perfect form of pleasure – they were exquisite but they left me hungry for more. So I scoured the shelves of the public library for editions of his obscurer writings, and I plundered the second hand book-shops of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire of their Wilde biographies. Dorian Gray had turned me into a confirmed Wildean; reading it was the beginning of a life-long Romance.

What is it about the man that turned him into one of your heroes?
Wilde first seduces you with his wit and the elegance of his English. Then the ideas and the culture that electrify his writings start to intoxicate you. You feel an intense intellectual excitement. Then you become fascinated by the tragi-comedy that was his life. Most of all though, both as a writer and as a figure of literary biography, he is simply great company -  funny, dazzling, humane and outrageous. 

"Both as a writer and as a figure of literary biography, [Wilde] is simply great company -  funny, dazzling, humane and outrageous." 

Oscar’s book collection was obviously very important to him. Why is this?
Books were the greatest single influence on Wilde’s life and writings. He sometimes referred to the volumes that most effected and charmed him as his ‘golden books’. These were the books that revolutionised his conception of the world, the books in which he recognised an aspect of himself for the first time. As events in his biography, these readerly encounters were as significant as his first meetings with some of his friends and lovers.

Yet Wilde did not so much discover as create himself through his reading: he was a man who built himself out of books. He used his favourite volumes as ‘prompt books’ for the various roles he assumed during the different phases of his biography. Life for Wilde could thus be made to imitate art; it might also be viewed through its filter. Wilde always came to life via books, literally seeing reality through them. Of an acquaintance, he would say, "She might have walked straight out of a page of Thackeray".

Things only became real to Wilde if they had first been subjected to the alchemy wrought by the artistic imagination – his own, or another artist’s. His feelings were never fully experienced (perhaps they were not even felt at all) until they had been expressed poetically or in the form of quotations. Friends, too, had to be baptized anew with names derived from literature if they were to assume a clear outline and significance.

Wilde’s reading was also the chief inspiration for his writings. He was essentially a pre-modern author who adapted and conflated the books he read, rather than a Romantic writer concerned with originality and self-expression. His works are saturated with allusions from his vast and miscellaneous reading: they form a little library of exquisite echoes.

What were his ‘golden books’?
Wilde had a whole library of golden books, but if I had to select five they would be the following titles: J.W. Meinhold – Sidonia the Sorcoress; Plato - The Dialogues; Pater - The Renaissance; Dante - The Divine Comedy; Flaubert - The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Wilde used to give these away as part of his seduction technique. Did it work?
It worked wonders. Neil Mckenna's excellent book on Wildes sex life chronicles a number of his conquests by books. Wilde's lover Alfred Douglas said that over 100 people were seduced by Wilde through the agency of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Do you think it would work today? What book would seduce you?!
Of course. Lovely language works like magic and poetical words are spells – well, it works some of the time. I would be seduced by a signed first edition of Wildes poem 'The Sphinx', one of the most beautiful volumes ever produced.  

Wilde’s sexuality was ultimately his downfall, but was it also his saviour – in that his homosexuality made him the man that he was?
Wilde's homosexuality is central to his life and to his legend. During his life, and until very recently, it was regarded as a scandal. Now he is seen as a martyr and a hero because of it.

To a modern audience, how important is Wilde’s sexuality to the understanding of his work?
Wilde's sexuality is extremely important for an understanding of his work, and it is one of the things that give his writings a profound contemporary resonance and relevance. We should, however, try to resist the temptation of reading sex into everything he wrote. His works obviously also engage with other issues such as those of class, race, metaphysics and gender relations. We should also remember that Wilde hated the idea of art as a mode of autobiography – he never intended to express or reveal himself.

It’s been said that “an unfamiliar Wilde emerges from this book”. Could you explain a bit more about that please?
Wilde is popularly regarded as a wit and dandy who wrote a few superbly elegant, but essentially lightweight, plays. My book highlights the profound and broad intellectual culture that animates his writings - it attempts to establish him as a towering intellectual figure of the late 19th century. I did not want to turn him into an excessively serious figure, however. Let's say that he was a seriously frivolous figure, or serious about not being too serious.

"Wilde's sexuality is extremely important for an understanding of his work, and it is one of the things that give his writings a profound contemporary resonance and relevance."

What do you think it is about Oscar Wilde that still fascinates and intrigues us today?
Wilde's wit keeps his writings fresh and evergreen, his life - so like a Greek Tragedy - has an enduring fascination, and the issues that animate both - concerning art, politics and sexuality - are as relevant today as they were in his time. Like all great writers, he produced works that can be endlessly reinterpreted so that each generation can see itself reflected in them. Likewise, each generation creates its own Oscar.

How long did it take you to finish the research for the book?
Two years for the research, one year for the writing. A lifetime for the background reading.

How different was your first draft to your final one?
The first draft was twice the length of the final version and extremely unwieldy. I boiled it down to its current size with the help of two expert editors – Penelope Hoare and David Smith – my readers owe them a great deal!

We understand you also write about subjects unconnected with your hero – what else do you write about?
London History, Italy and Italian Culture, and the great Jorge Luis Borges.

What’s next for you?
I am working on two scripts about Wilde's life – one in Italian, which I hope will be made into a short film, and one in English, which, with any luck, will be produced as a TV drama. The first is called Death in Genoa, the second, All about Oscar. When I have finished these I think it will be time to write about someone else.

What else would you like to say?
Morrissey was right – there is more to life than books you know, but not much more.

Read our review of Oscar's Books and Thomas Wright's list of Wilde's Top Five Books.

Oscar's Books, by Thomas Wright
Published by: Chatto & Windus, an imprint of The Random House Group
Released: 4 September 2008
ISBN: 0701180617

Buy Thomas Wright's Oscar's Books online. You'll save money to put towards his earlier book, Oscar Wilde's Table Talk.