Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was a major influence on the culture of his time and remains relevant today as a model of wit and style a sexual icon and a moral example. John Stokes shows how in the 1880s and 1890s Wilde played a vital part in the development of modern culture inspiring others to carry his ideas on into the twentieth century. Stokes examines the evidence of diaries letters dramatizations of Wilde''s plays and impersonations of the man himself and discusses Wilde''s relationship to fin-de-sicle and twentieth-century ideas.