His work and spirit are as relevant, witty, and alive as ever 112 years after his death.

Here are ten interesting facts about Oscar Wilde:

1. Wilde was born with three middle names. His full name is “Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde,” born in Dublin in 1854.
2. His mother, Jane Wilde was a successful poet and Irish nationalist whose pen name was “Sperenza.” His father was also an author but more well known for his work as an oto-ophthalmologic and for being knighted for his work as an assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland.
3. Wilde was an impressive linguist. Home schooled, he was taught French and German and also had working knowledge of Italian and Ancient Greek.
4. Wilde, adding “lecturer” to his array of talents, embarked on a tour of America in 1882 and held talks on a wide variety of subjects from “The English Renaissance” to “Decorative Art.”
5. Wilde married Constance Lloyd on May 29, 1884 and had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. Cyril fought and died in World War I in the Battle of Festubert in France where he is buried. Vyvyan and Cyril changed their last name to Holland, like his mother, after their father’s imprisonment. Vyvyan went on to become a translator for the BBC and author of the autobiography ‘Son of Oscar Wilde’ (1954). Vyvyan’s son and Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, published the Oscar Wilde biography ‘A Portrait of Oscar Wilde’ (2008).
6. Though thought of as an author, he only published one novel, “The Portait of Dorian Gray” (1891).
7. He was an advocate of socialism and in his only political essay “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (1891) Wilde expounds an anarchist philosophy.
8. Before his death due to cerebral meningitis he was conditionally baptized in the Catholic Church.
9.  Oscar Wilde’s last words were “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.”
10. His famous tomb was designed by Sir Jacob Epstein, whose ashes were placed alongside Wilde in the structure in 1950 per his request. The Angel statue adorning the tomb was originally installed with male genitalia which has since been vandalized.

To celebrate, he decided he wanted to give his new pet, Rothko, and millions of other rescue dogs a voice by creating a new photo series entitled Poetic Dogs.

Bannino wrote on the project’s IndieGoGo page: “#POETICDOGS is a photo-project where dogs are besides famous writers: Speaking through their expressions, sounds and movements, they’re telling you everything saying nothing, just like an author would do with words in a fine poem.”

All the dogs featured in the series are from the same kennel near Turin, in Italy, where Bannino’s dog, Rothko, was adopted from.

Charles Dickens

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

Edgar Allan Poe

Emily Dickinson

Ernest Hemingway

James Joyce

Leo Tolstoy

Mark Twain

Oscar Wilde

William Shakespeare

You can see more of the pictures and learn about the dogs’ stories on Bannino’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

Dracula

Author: Bram Stocker

ISBN:9780141439846

Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker’s original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire’s journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power.

Today’s critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.

Price: 18,5 GEL

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Author: Oscar Wilde

ISBN: 9780140620337

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years.

Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. It is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world and a manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.”

The ever-quotable Wilde, who once delighted London with his scintillating plays, scandalized readers with this, his only novel.  The Picture of Dorian Gray firmly established Wilde as one of the great voices of the Aesthetic movement, and endures as a classic that is as timeless as its hero.

Price: 15,9 GEL

(Top, L-R: Anne Tyler, Desmond Bagley, Ed McBain, Evelyn Waugh and Friedrich Nietzsche. Bottom, L-R: Oscar Wilde, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Michael Morpurgo and Italo Calvino)

This week we celebrate authors of the past and present who had birthdays in the month of October. Check them out below.

Oscar Wilde

(October 16, 1854- November 30, 1900)

Novelist/playwright/poet Oscar Wilde dazzled 19th century society with his legendary wit and unflappable personality. He penned: The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Happy Prince and Other Stories, among other works.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(October 21, 1772- July 25, 1834)

English Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, penned many famous works, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Friedrich Nietzsche

(October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900)

Philosopher/poet/composer Nietzche penned many classics such as Why I Am So Wise.

 Italo Calvino

(October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985)

Calvino, an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels, wrote hits like The Queen’s Necklace.

Evelyn Waugh

(October 28, 1903 – April 10, 1966)

An English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; and also was a prolific journalist and reviewer, Waugh wrote many popular novels such as A Handful of Dust.

Anne Tyler

(October 25, 1941 – )

American author, Tyler, has written several novels, four of which have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote The Accidental Tourist and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1985 and the Ambassador Book Award for Fiction in 1986. The novel was adapted into a 1988 award-winning film.

Michael Morpurgo

(October 5, 1943- )

Morpurgo is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist who is known best for children’s novels. His novel, War Horse, has been adapted as a radio broadcast and as a stage play. It was also adapted as a 2011 British film.

Desmond Bagley

(October 29, 1923 – April 12, 1983)

Bagley was a British journalist and novelist known for a series of best-selling thrillers. One such thriller is The Enemy which was turned into a film in 2001.

Ed McBain

(October 15, 1926 – July 6, 2005)

McBain was an American author and screenwriter but was best known for his crime fiction such as King’s Ransom.

Which book would you like to read?

Buy Being Earnest                            Buy Much Ado                          Bue Les Mis ]]>