WILDE IN AMERICA

The story of Oscar Wilde’s landmark 1882 American tour explains how this quotable literary eminence became famous for being famous.

Oscar Wilde’s American tour turned him into an international star. In one eventful year, Wilde traveled 15,000 miles, hitting 29 of the country’s 30 largest cities, delivering 150 lectures, giving more than 100 newspaper interviews, and visiting Walt Whitman, Henry James, Ulysses S. Grant, and Jefferson Davis. His lectures were one part educational theater, two parts vaudeville act. Soon he rivaled the queen in popularity. More amazing still, he had published nothing of note when the tour began; by trading on his renown, Wilde pioneered a route to celebrity that still works today. Structured around nine lasting principles of fame creation devised by Wilde, this lively narrative biography reveals Wilde as the true inventor of celebrity culture. Expertly blending Wilde’s charming wit with details of nineteenth-century America, David M. Friedman turns the story of Wilde’s life into a remarkable tale of travel and transformation, comedy and capitalism, ego and excess. 16 pages of illustrations. David M. Friedman is the author of Wilde in America, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis and The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever. He lives in New York.