Oscar Wilde's Paris

Oscar Wilde's Paris: Legends and Legacies chronicles Wilde's lifelong relationship with the French capital, the city he called "e;the most wonderful city in the world,"e; and the site of his rise to literary fame, self-imposed exile, and eventual death.Focused on the 1880s to the 1940s, editors Colette Colligan and Gregory Mackie shed light on this vibrant, transnational chapter of Wilde s life and legacy. Contributors document how his relationship with the city developed in literature, journalism, and the visual arts, as well as in the city s famous cafes, bars, restaurants, hotels, and cemeteries.This collection highlights three touchstones in the relationship between Wilde and Paris: his Parisian self-fashioning, the impact of the city s cultural scene on his career, and his legacy s absorption into the myth of Paris as a place of artistic and sexual freedom.Whether Wilde is viewed as ambitious aesthete, Francophile flneur, or disreputable expatriate, Oscar Wilde s Paris tells the story of how one man s life became intertwined with the cultural imagination of a city, and how that city, in turn, claimed him as its own.