Truly Wilde

Now in paperback: the Lambda Literary Award Finalist about "a sophisticated, overheated lesbian world in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. A great story, beautifully told." -Edmund White. Born a scant three months after her uncle Oscar's notorious arrest, raised in the shadow of the greatest scandal of the turn of the twentieth century, Dolly Wilde attracted people of taste and talent wherever she went. Brilliantly witty, charged with charm, a "born writer," she drenched her prodigious talents in liquids, burnt up her opportunities in flamboyant affairs, and died as she lived-repeating her uncle's history of excess, collapse, and ruin. In this biography, Joan Schenkar has created both a captivating portrait of Dolly and a cultural history of Natalie Clifford Barney's remarkable Parisian salon-frequented by Janet Flanner, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes-in which she shone so brightly.