Why read Oscar Wilde on Trial?

Book cover of Oscar Wilde on Trial: The Criminal Proceedings, from Arrest to Imprisonment

Book description

The most authoritative account of a pivotal event in legal and cultural history: the trials of Oscar Wilde on charges of "gross indecency"

Among the most infamous prosecutions of a literary figure in history, the two trials of Oscar Wilde for committing acts of "gross indecency" occurred at the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Oscar Wilde on Trial as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Simon Joyce

Author

As an academic whose recent work has been LGBTQ+ history, it has been amazing and humbling to recognize that we haven’t a complete account of one of the most famous events of all—the trials of Oscar Wilde.

This absence hasn’t stopped us from speculating and theorizing about them and their significance, but that work will be easier in the future because of Bristow’s masterful book. Utilizing hard-to-find materials in archives and the digitization of newspapers, Bristow gives us the closest we’re likely to get to an accurate understanding of what happened in 1895.

It is a powerful case for how…

From Simon's 3 favorite reads in 2023.