Oscar Wilde: “going out into the world without a single book?”

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A new biography of Oscar Wilde is coming out called Oscar’s Books, by Thomas Wright and I am frothing at the mouth to get my grubby little paws on it. Brenda Maddox reviews it in The Literary Review and the review brought me to tears. It’s very resonant for me right now, for various reasons … books … and what they mean to my family … and how books, and the reaching out for a book in a dark moment is sometimes all you have to hang onto … and also: it is a good sign, a sign of health, of life … If you can still read, you are still alive. Not just surviving but alive. It is tremendously important.

Maddox writes:

Among the humiliations Wilde suffered after being sent to prison were not only compulsory silence – prisoners were forbidden to speak to one another – but deprivation of books. All he had in his cell at Pentonville, apart from his bed (a plank laid across two trestles), were a Bible, a prayer book and a hymnal. When at last his sympathetic MP won him permission to have more books, Wilde nominated Pater’s The Renaissance along with the works of Flaubert and some by Cardinal Newman. These were allowed, but only at the rate of one a week. Moved to Reading Gaol, he found himself under a more sympathetic prison governor. His book request lists after July 1896 show him developing an interest in more recently published titles, including novels by George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. Wilde later said that he also read Dante every day in prison and that Dante had saved his reason.

2nd US President John Adams once wrote a letter to his son John Quincy, giving him a word of advice: “You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket”, and – speaking from my own experience – it is true. I am never alone if there is a book somewhere near me.

So Wilde felt unhinged without his books. Where did they go? Who would he be without them?

Unbelievably moving to me.

To read a biography of Wilde focusing on his library is spectacularly exciting to me, and I wish it were out NOW.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde

Maddox writes:

When he was discharged in May 1897, he was not allowed to take his accumulated books with him and faced what he called the horror of ‘going out into the world without a single book’. But friends rallied round. Entering the hotel room in Dieppe where he was to begin his exile, he found it full of books furnished by his friends and he broke down and wept.

Blankets, pillows, warm clothes? Pshaw. Canned goods? Leave ’em at the door.

If I go into exile, send me all my books, please.

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7 Responses to Oscar Wilde: “going out into the world without a single book?”

  1. brendan says:

    i myself began to weep at the image of wilde being greeted by such generosity and then you followed it up with ‘i feel ya, dawg’ and the intersection of hilarity and empathy was almost too much to bear.

    love this post.

  2. jean says:

    “Tooooo many books!” But, truly, this is not so. Why travel without your books?

  3. ted says:

    I need to read this book! Since we met both arriving early at a bar so that we could read before the other arrived, you know I know what you mean. My grandparents were allowed 10 crates to bring with them from Germany, I’d say half were books.

  4. lynD says:

    Oh! So vivid! That hits so close to home. Give me my books. ::sigh::

    Thank you.

  5. Kate P says:

    It immediately made me think of the scene in “Little Voice” where LV is trapped in her bedroom as the house is burning, and she’s gathering her LP’s and telling them (imitating Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”?): “you’re all here. . . and I’m not going to leave here ever again, because I love you all. . .”

    I could see you and O.W. talking to your books that way. Any friend of books is a friend of mine!

  6. De says:

    Not long after reading this I ordered 7 books from Barnes and Noble. *sigh* Like I needed 7 more books to add to my stacks of books waiting for my attention.

    Poor Oscar Wilde. I can’t imagine being without books. That’s punishment enough, who needs prison?

  7. Thomas Wright says:

    Hi Sheila,

    I wrote ‘Oscar’s Books’ and was moved by your words and by your eagerness to get your hands on a copy. I’ll post you a copy if you send me your address.

    Yours in Oscar,

    Thomas Wright

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