Based on long-lost or overlooked
material, this new and important biography of Wilde's emotional and sex life has been praised
by the Manchester Evening News as "exceptional, intensive, passionate and beautiful". Oscar Wilde himself said: "Iuse my
entire genius in my life; I merely use my talent in my work". Neil McKenna concentrates for the first time on the tormented genius of Wilde's private life by including remarkable love letters and details about Wilde's otherwise unknown relationships with other men. McKenna spent years researching Wilde's life. That is why the
material includes poems that have never previously been published as well as recently discovered statementsmade by male prostitutes and Wilde's blackmailers during his trial. McKenna provides us with explosive evidence of the political machinations behind Wilde's sodomy trial and the central role played by writers in the middle-class homosexual world in Victorian London. Breathtakingly written andmeticulously researched,The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde reconstructs Wilde's entire astonishing Odyssey through London's sexual underworld and sketches a frank and vivid psychological portrait of a convulsive genius.