Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle

Book excerpt: This volume reads Oscar Wilde's literary texts in relation to his open support for revolutionaries, along with his expressions of solidarity with Irish republicans, anarchists, workers and migrants. Framing Wilde's literary writing in relation to his very active participation in the radical political culture of the fin de siècle, Ó Donghaile argues that, contrary to contemporary representations of Wilde as an effete and socially disengaged figure, his aesthetical radicalism was informed by and contributed to a broader set of progressive political initiatives being pursued at the end of the nineteenth century.