On January 3, 1882, Oscar Wilde, a twenty-seven-year-old "genius"--at least by his own reckoning--arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man had made such a spectacle of himself in London with his eccentric fashion sense, acerbic wit, and extravagant passion for art and home design that Gilbert & Sullivan wrote an operetta lampooning him. He was hired to go to America to promote that work by presenting lectures on interior decorating. But Wilde had his own business plan. He would go to promote himself.
And he did, traveling some 15,000 miles and visiting 150 American cities as...
On January 3, 1882, Oscar Wilde, a twenty-seven-year-old "genius"--at least by his own reckoning--arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man h...
