Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity
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The story of Oscar Wilde's landmark 1882 American tour explains how this quotable literary eminence became famous for being famous.
On January 3, 1882, Oscar Wilde, a twenty-seven-year-old "genius"-at least by his own reckoning-arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man had made such a spectacle of himself in London with his eccentric fashion sense, acerbic wit, and extravagant passion for art and home design that Gilbert & Sullivan wrote an operetta lampooning him. He was hired to go t...






















