The Oxford Handbook of Oscar Wilde

The Oxford Handbook of Oscar Wilde puts Wilde the Icon into an expansive literary and dramatic context. It offers a readable guide to Wilde studies for the early twenty-first century. Its chapters reflect Wilde’s status as a queer writer while filling in the gaps that this focus have left and looking forward to the next generation of critical studies on Wilde. It is designed to appeal to students and those with a general interest in Wilde, as well as professional academics. Its comprehensive discussions of his writings show how these interact with, and transfigure, both their age and his life, while providing readers with clear and extensive suggestions on approaches to reading, thinking, and writing about them.

It is organized in four sections: Places, Works, Intellectual Contexts, and Reception. The first section on Places tells the story of Wilde’s life and intellectual evolution through the places that defined its contours: Dublin, Oxford, London, America, France, and Italy. The second section on Wilde’s Works provides new and in-depth directions to close reading Wilde’s writing, with generative ideas on the development, style, structure, and significance of each of his major works. The section on Intellectual Contexts brings together chapters on the main ideas and cultures of thought that shaped Wilde’s thinking, from late-nineteenth century sexuality and fashion to the ancient world and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The final section on Reception focuses on the central categories in which Wilde’s works and life have been read and influenced cultural movements since his death. Wilde’s afterlife has been vibrant and chapters in this section include discussions of how he influenced camp and pop, alongside the contentious textual history of his works.

Kate Hext, Associate Professor of Decadent Literature and the Arts, University of Exeter, Alex Murray, Professor of Modern Literature, Queens University Belfast

Kate Hext is Associate Professor in Decadent Literature and the Arts at the University of Exeter and Visiting Professor of English at Ewha Womans University. Her published work includes Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies (2024) and a new edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (2025). She is a founding co-editor of the journal Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures.

Alex Murray is Professor of Modern Literature at Queen’s University Belfast and founding co-editor of Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures (Johns Hopkins University Press). His most recent books include Decadent Conservatism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Past (Oxford University Press, 2023) and the collection Decadence: A Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2022).