Oscar Wilde's Italian Dream

In Oscar Wilde's Italian Dream 1875-1900, leading Wilde author Renato Miracco has combined written research with visual iconographic material - from Wilde's earliest heady trips to Italy as an Oxford student to his final days in France and Italy in 1900 after his incarceration in Reading Gaol, and his voluntary exile from Great Britain. Italy, and the larger world outside of London, was essential to the sensitivity and awareness of Wilde's identity, to his contributions to the prison reform, to his challenges to the social norms and sexual stereotypes in his last years. Latin formed the basis of a proper English gentleman's education-and Italy presented a landscape which animated and exacerbated social and personal conflict for young men such as Wilde. It also offered a great deal of sexual liberty compared to the oppressive moral atmosphere of England at that time.