{"id":214430,"date":"2025-12-04T04:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/214430\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T04:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T04:52:16","slug":"the-legacy-of-a-scandal-by-merlin-holland-a-dramatic-and-engaging-narrative-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/214430\/","title":{"rendered":"the Legacy of a Scandal by Merlin Holland \u2013 A dramatic and engaging narrative \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Oscar: the Legacy of a Scandal <\/strong> <\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Merlin Holland<\/p>\n

ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-1787705920<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Europa Editions <\/p>\n

Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a330<\/p>\n

\u201cI have nothing to declare but my genius,\u201d Irish playwright Oscar Wilde<\/a> is said to have stated on arriving in America; Merlin Holland\u2019s response in a similar scenario was quite different from his grandfather\u2019s: \u201cNothing but my albatross,\u201d he quipped. While having a witty and intellectually brilliant Wilde in the family is an undoubted asset to the gene pool, the downside has been heartbreak, loss, litigation, perfidy, piracies, forgeries and the exhaustive demands of Wilde\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

In After Oscar: the Legacy of a Scandal, Holland relates how the public shame that surrounded Wilde\u2019s downfall shadowed his family into the mid-20th century, and how long after that his fame continued to affect their lives. Wilde was imprisoned because of his homosexuality that was illegal in England at the time. <\/p>\n

The scandal shocked society. Devastated, his wife Constance and their children, Cyril and Vyvyan, fled to the Continent, never to see Oscar again. In later years, Vyvyan confided trustingly in his diary: \u201cAfter his appalling prison experience, he should have come back to Mama and Cyril and me which I think he was perfectly prepared to do at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holland is a Wilde scholar and a gifted storyteller who writes in an elegant, lucid style as though in conversation with his reader. He weaves the personal story, its cultural context and the building of Wilde\u2019s eventual social and literary acceptance into a dramatic and engaging narrative. The literary status of Wilde was affected through the years by society\u2019s attitude to his sexuality and, initially, much was done to secure it by Wilde\u2019s great friend and literary executor, Robbie Ross.<\/p>\n

The book traces the intricacies of court battles between Oscar\u2019s friends and enemies, including the relentless tormenting of Ross by Wilde\u2019s mercurial, jealous lover, Alfred Douglas. Other relationships, altered and sometimes marred by Wilde\u2019s legacy, are deftly assembled by Holland: the loving connection between Oscar and Constance; the strong but strained bond between their grown sons; Wilde\u2019s adverse intrusion into Holland\u2019s own relationship with his mother who was susceptible to whitewashing Wilde.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Oscar Wilde\u2019s forgotten friend who nurtured him back from prison life on the French RivieraOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

One of Holland\u2019s aims in this book is to set the record straight and debunk the many fabrications that distort the story of his grandfather, and this he does with a forensic thoroughness and meticulous honesty.<\/p>\n

Noreen Doody is the author of The Influence of Oscar Wilde on WB Yeats: \u201cAn Echo of Someone Else\u2019s Music\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Oscar: the Legacy of a Scandal Author: Merlin Holland ISBN-13: 978-1787705920 Publisher: Europa Editions Guideline Price: \u00a330…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[1879,18,117,19,17,37011],"class_list":{"0":"post-214430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-book-reviews","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-oscar-wilde"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115659508553104594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}