Free audiobook: The Real Oscar Wilde by Robert Sherard

I have recorded a free audiobook of Robert Sherard's third biography of Oscar Wilde. The Real Oscar Wilde is now available to download from Librivox.org (did I mention it's free?)

This biography covers much the same ground as Sherard's previous lengthy work, 1906's The Life of Oscar Wilde, except that by 1917 he had read the unexpurgated typescript of Wilde's monumental prison letter De Profundis. Wilde's former lover, Alfred Lord Douglas, had also penned a biography of Wilde by this point, and Sherard devotes much time to refuting Bosie's negative claims about the man whom Sherard maintains was "a superman".

I previously recorded The Life of Oscar Wilde and Sherard's first, much shorter, book about Wilde: Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship. Download links below.

Sherard's fourth book has the snappy title Oscar Wilde Twice Defended from André Gide's Wicked Lies and Frank Harris's Cruel Libels; to Which Is Added a Reply to George Bernard Shaw, a Refutation of Dr G.J. Renier's Statements, a Letter to the Author from Lord Alfred Douglas and an Interview with Bernard Shaw by Hugh Kingsmill. I am not able to read it for LibriVox just yet because, although the book is in the public domain in Europe given that Sherard died 70+ years ago, its publication date of 1934 means it won't be free of copyright in the US until 2030. I needed a break anyway!

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