The Women of Homer
by Oscar Wilde, edited by Thomas Wright and Donald Mead
London: The Oscar Wilde Society, 103 pp., £30.00
Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde
by Thomas Wright
John Macrae/Holt 370 pp., $18.00 (paper)
When asked what he intended to do after finishing at Oxford, the young Oscar Wilde—who was already well known not only for his outré persona but for his brilliant achievements as a classics scholar—made it clear in which direction his ambitions lay. “God knows,” the twenty-three-year-old said, “I won’t be a dried-up Oxford don, anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.”
