Few personalities in the history of literature have aroused so much interest as that of Oscar Wilde, yet the essentials of his nature are still not recognized and we are left to catch glimpses of the real man in the scattered reminiscences of the period. Here, at last, is the whole life of the man who was probably the most delightful and witty conversationalist the world has ever seen. Hesketh Pearson has succeeded in presenting Oscar Wilde as he was at the Café Royale in London, and in making the reader see him as the darling of the drawing rooms, the conversationalist, not the convict. But this is not a hero-worshipping book—Pearson shows Wilde's shortcomings and gives instances when Wilde was over-dramatic and when he failed to come off as a writer and a talker. This is a remarkable recreation of a genius set sharply in contrast to a period that battened on his wit, persecuted him, failed to understand him. Some of Wilde's stories make their first appearance in this book as do some of the conversational original s of several witticisms in his plays. "The most true, the most sensible and the fairest book which has yet been written about Oscar Wilde."—Harold Nicholson in The Observer Illustrated with 15 gravure plates.