In old days men had the rack now they have the Press. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unedible. In the popular memory he spoke entirely in epigrams and witticisms: 'I can resist everything except temptation. Homosexuals revered him as a martyr to 'the love that dare not speak its name.' (The phrase occurs in a poem by Douglas.) Evangelists called him an unclean beast, the subject of more than 700 sermons in the United States alone between 18. In the past Wilde's fall usually appeared a cautionary tale. In Oscar Wilde Ellmann's tale is very nearly the opposite: A figure of showy splendor, 'refulgent, imperial,' quickly conquers London and then, through hubris, romantic infatuation, and indecision, loses everything - family, reputation, possessions - to end a wraith-like spectre cadging drinks on the grands boulevards of Paris, eventually suffering a gruesome death in a cheap hotel room. In that book Ellmann focused on an exile who endured poverty, censorship, blindness and family tragedy to emerge the saint of modernism, the most admired writer of the century. Ellmann, who died last year, spent most of his distinguished career studying the Irish literary renaissance: two early books on Yeats are standard references, and his James Joyce is generally regarded as the best literary biography of our time. Lively as their books are, they cannot compete with this capacious, deeply sympathetic and vastly entertaining new life by Richard Ellmann. The fate of Oscar Wilde, who like a hero of classic tragedy plummeted from the heights of fame to utter ruin, has attracted many biographers, among them that prince of liars Frank Harris and the anecdotal Hesketh Pearson. On the calling card - left 10 days earlier at the Albemarle Club - were the words, with the now-famous misspelling: 'To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite.'

'Bosie' was the pretty and amoral Lord Alfred Douglas his father the bellicose Marquess of Queensberry, who had established the rules for boxing.

I don't see anything now but a criminal prosecution. Bosie's father has left a card at my club with hideous words on it. 'Dearest Bobbie, Since I saw you something has happened. ON FEBRUARY 28, 1895, the author of The Importance of Being Earnest, London's newest hit comedy, scribbled in pencil an anguished note to his friend Robert Ross.

Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann