Louis Bayard's "The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts" Coming this Fall

Press release

“Wonderfully researched, beautifully crafted, movingly told, The Wildes is a treasure to read."
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost

“The Wildes is a boldly audacious re-visioning of the martyrdom of Oscar Wilde, one which would have astonished Wilde himself.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, award-winning poet and novelist

“Louis Bayard has outdone himself with this brilliant novel. The Wildes combines the best of Bayard’s trademark wit and charm with dialogue so sharp and masterful that Oscar Wilde himself could have written it. It transported me to a different time and made me laugh, gasp, and tear up. Bravo!”
—Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls

Oscar Wilde is renowned for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, his hilarious comedies of manners, his wit and flamboyance, and, perhaps most notably, his prison sentence for committing homosexual acts with the young aristocratic poet, Lord Alfred Douglas. What is much less known is that he was a devoted husband to his wife, Constance, and father of two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. In THE WILDES: A NOVEL IN FIVE ACTS (Algonquin Books; Publication Date: September 17, 2024; $29), Louis Bayard returns with his usual narrative flair to unfold the captivating tale of Wilde’s family, navigating through the turbulent waves of Victorian England and the harrowing trenches of World War I. "What was lost to history Louis Bayard has brilliantly brought to life: the wit, charm, tragedy and tenderness of Wilde's family. Wonderfully researched, beautifully crafted, movingly told, The Wildes is a treasure to read,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer.

With precision and empathy, Bayard brings Constance Wilde, a formidable intelligence in her own right, out of the shadows of history, and brilliantly captures her discovery of Wilde’s relationship Lord Alfred Douglas during a family holiday to the Norfolk countryside. He portrays the evolving relationship between Wilde and the enigmatic Lord Douglas, and then deftly explores the consequences of Wilde’s imprisonment for homosexuality, a societal condemnation that sends ripples through all of their lives. Structured ingeniously into five acts, THE WILDES is a vivid portrait of the exile of the Wilde family, the battlefield experiences of Cyril, and Vyvyan’s quest for answers in the aftermath of the war. It culminates in a brilliant act of the imagination, reuniting all of the characters in a tableau that is as surprising as it is moving.

Explaining his inspiration for writing THE WILDES, Bayard says, “I remember watching Stephen Fry’s excellent 1997 biopic, Wilde, and feeling rather poignantly for his wife, Constance, who seemed so sincerely confused about what was going on with her husband and Lord Alfred but who wasn’t granted much in the way of scenes herself. When I learned that they had two boys, I began to wonder what that family would have looked like, outside of the public eye. Vyvyan Holland’s 1954 memoir, Son of Oscar Wilde, was the game-changer. I suddenly saw this enormously devoted father whose boys cherished his memory. Then, after reading Franny Moyle’s Constance, I realized that Oscar’s wife was not a timid hausfrau but a feminist intellectual whose voice had been lost to history. With that, I conceived the notion of a novel that could tell the Wildes’ entire story, across multiple points of view and generations, in a way that preserves them as the family they wanted to be.”

Following the success of his Netflix-adapted The Pale Blue Eye and the enchanting Jackie & Me, Bayard has delivered a remarkable and entertaining history—one that will fascinate Wilde fans and lovers of family dramas—that firmly cements his status as a master storyteller.