Michèle Mendelssohn, Associate Professor in English Literature and Deputy Director, Rothermere American Institute of the University of Oxford, will lecture on her highly praised book, Making Oscar Wilde (Oxford University Press, 2018), that recounts and explores Oscar Wilde's visit to America in 1882.
Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him.
Join us for this special event with PEN America Prize Semi-Finalist and Oxford University Professor Michèle Mendelssohn as she reveals the untold story of the young Oscar Wilde's career in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Drawing from her internationally-acclaimed new book, she tracks a larger-than-life hero on his quest to make his name and gain international acclaim. 'Success is a science,' Wilde believed, 'if you have the conditions, you get the result.'
Professor Mendelssohn will discuss the twists and turns of Wilde's incredible journey via sensation-hungry Victorian journalism, popular entertainment, racial controversies, sex scandals, and the growth of Irish nationalism. Based on her new book, Prof. Mendelssohn combines new evidence and gripping cultural history to dramatize Wilde's rise, fall, and resurrection as part of a spectacular transatlantic pageant.
The book will be available for purchase at the talk.
Read more about Dr. Mendelssohn, her research, and her publications.