Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books.

Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, by Nicholas Frankel; pp. 222. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, $47.50.

Ours is an age where the enigmatic personality of Oscar Wilde--controversial in his own time--dominates Wilde studies, laments Nicholas Frankel. At the outset of Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books, Frankel summarizes the biographical imperative of Wilde studies. Wilde is identified with his amoral wit, clever irony, and satire--all masks to reveal himself. At the best extreme, current scholarship remains skeptical and views Wilde's literary works as a poor substitute for court documents and letters; at the worst, it conflates the author and the text. Frankel's approach, by contrast, goes against the grain of Wilde studies to examine the physical appearance of the text, which mattered as much to the Victorian fin-de-siecle reader as the text itself. Frankel uses the artifact--the face …