"Re-Imag(in)ing Oscar in Fiction: Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries"

Gyles Brandreth’s intriguing contribution to the numerous fictional portraits of Oscar Wilde that have been published in the last twenty-five years consists in his imag(in)ing Wilde as a sleuth in a series of detective novels, in which his epigrams (his ‘Word’) run galore and the various facets of his personality (his ‘Image’) are progressively but significantly unravelled. In the Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries (2007- ), narrator Robert Sherard (a character based on the eponymous historical figure – i.e. Wilde’s first biographer and one of his closest friends) cultivates Oscar’s complex, mythical (self-made) images and words by literally retelling his friend’s ‘truest’ life-story in retrospect. The novels may thus be seen as snapshots of Wilde’s life, Sherard being the more-than-willing commentator or caption writer. This paper will illustrate how Brandreth’s use of Sherard as the fictional narrator in this ongoing series of novels (three have been published so far) allows him to give new impetus to traditional representations of Wilde. I will first draw some parallel between Oscar Wilde’s depiction(s) on the book covers and the stories proper, before paying particular attention to ‘Oscar the detective’ as a convincing and nicely-drawn character, in both meanings of the word. Moreover, I will show that textual images of Oscar Wilde in contemporary fiction are as representative of his ever-increasing popularity as portraitures in the strict sense of the word.