Table of Contents

Part 1 Beginnings: toil of growing up; Wilde at Oxford; Rome and Greece; an incomplete aesthete. Part 2 Advances: setting sail; declaring his genius; indoctrinating America; countering the Renaissance; two kinds of stage; Mr and Mrs Wilde. Part 3 Exaltations: disciple to master; the age of Dorian; Hellenizing Paris; a good woman, and others; a late Victorian love affair; sailing into the wind. Part 4 Disgrace: "I am the prosecutor in this case"; doom deferred; Pentonville, Wandsworth and Reading; escape from Reading. Part 5 Exile: prisoner at large; the leftover years. Epilogue. Appendices: books by Wilde's parents; Wilde's manner of speaking.