OSCAR WILDE'S CRUCIFIX

While a student at Oxford, Oscar Wilde was courting a beautiful Dublin girl, Florence Balcombe, and on Christmas Day 1876 he presented her with a golden crucifix. Two years later, Florence surprised Oscar by suddenly marrying another young writerfrom Dublin, Bram Stoker, the future author of Dracula.

Dutch writer Maarten Asscher uses that crucifix as a fulcrum to examine Wilde''s early development as an artist, from a seminal trip to Greece to his whirlwind tour of America, including real-life encounters with Walt Whitman and Arthur Conan Doyle. Asscher draws on the complete panoply of Wilde scholarship to supplement historical fact with imaginative reconstruction, including a myth-busting account of Wilde''s deathbed in Paris, and a fictional solution to the mystery of the crucifix delivered by none other than Sherlock Holmes. The result is a convincing and original interpretation of Victorian history, and a literary tour de force.