Commemorating President Obama’s First 100 Days, this week’s Early Word highlights new books featuring the UK’s Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes.
Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde
By Thomas Wright
Another thing Oscar Wilde had to declare — besides his genius — was a great library. And why not? It would have been unusual had this remarkable and tragic Irish playwright, poet, and author — who found inspiration and consolation in his carefully collected books as both "a record of his life and as an emblem of his personality" — had not been fostered from an early age to appreciate literature, writing, and books. From a young age, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was exposed to a steady barrage of words from his Anglo-Irish parents who retold local tales, classic literature, and their own work — Sir William was an innovative folklorist, Lady Wilde "a famous poetess" — nurturing both an early capacity and undying love for language. As Wilde would go on to Oxford and beyond, collecting and consuming a variety of tomes, each added to his impressive intellect as well as accumulation of ideas. And most, if not all, of these volumes — and then some — would make their way into his library, which author Thomas Wright spent 20 years reading in order to instill into the rewarding Built of Books the intellectual and emotional heart of a rich literary biography that considers, through his taste in books, the mind and personality of Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately, after the guilty verdict in the infamous Queensbury trial, at the start of his prison sentence, all of Wilde’s possessions, including his entire library, were sold at public auction to settle his debts. An "inconsolable" Wilde would never fully recover. Wright highlights his account with reproductions of annotated books, pages of Wilde's reading lists, and an index of referenced authors.
The Language of Bees
By Laurie R. King
Mary Russell will witness many kinds of insanity in Laurie R. King’s newest novel. From the dissolute of Bohemian London to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past, the suicides at Stonehenge to a bizarre religious cult, Russell will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever faced - a murderer her husband and partner Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons only he knows. In The Language of Bees, the ninth entry in King’s bestselling feminist-bent mystery series featuring the illustrious detectives — though Holmes is restlessly retired to his Sussex Downs bee keeping operation — the couple come back from a long vacation to encounter unexpected whodunits. First, an entire colony of bees has disappeared from one of Holmes’ hives. But even more ominously, Holmes's estranged artist son Damien Adler, "a drug-addled derelict" who has his own questionable, homicide-ridden history, pays a visit. Though there may be implications he’d like to avoid, Damien enlists his father's aid in searching for his missing wife and daughter, while Mary undertakes her own quest into Damien's past. And Holmes himself gets a little secretive. It’s all more than a little elementary.
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