From Lionized to Ostracized: Life, Letters of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius , by Barbara Belford. Random House, 381 pages, $29.95.

The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde , edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis. Henry Holt, 1,270 pages, $45.

When Oscar Wilde landed at New York harbor on Jan. 2, 1882, he had written almost nothing. The works on which Read More