Reading in the Garden

Wonderfully Wilde Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1854.   He was a multi-talented and wildly popular witty writer and lecturer. He wrote everything from fairy tales to poems and plays, as well as one novel, T he Picture of Dorian Gray .   Oscar Wilde was a husband and father of two boys, and he was gay, a well-known secret.   When he was professionally at the top of his game, he had an affair with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.   Unfortunately, Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, found out and was not too pleased. Alfred’s angry dad left Oscar a nasty little calling card on which he called him a sodomite, though in his outrage he misspelled it as somdomite.   Oscar took offense to the slur and sued the marquis for libel—a life-changing error on his part.   He should have let it go, let it go, or at least known the importance of having a good attorney. During the trial Daddy Douglas’s sneaky lawyer tur...

John, the Muse You may know that Robert Louis Stevenson is the famed author of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and other tales.    But did you know that this sickly Scottish author stayed in a boarding house in San Francisco at the end of 1879 until the spring of 1880, waiting for his true love, Fanny, to finalize the end of her marriage to a philandering husband? During that time, Stevenson wrote furiously trying to earn money for life with his soon-to-be bride and her kids, who were across the bay in Oakland.   He cranked out essays, penned about his own travels across America, wrote the novella Prince Otto , and contemplated writing The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World. While no draft of the book actually exists, Brian Doyle took up the challenge to write what could have been another of Stevenson’s masterpieces.   In the old, florifer...

Candy for the Mind  O. Henry is pen name of William Sydney Porter, who wrote over 600 short stories in his lifetime. Often funny, sometimes touching, always witty and imaginative, each story ended with a surprising twist. One of his most famous stories is the The Gift of the Magi   where a young, penniless couple sacrifices something dear to their hearts in order to buy the perfect Christmas present for each other. The ending has a sweet twist to it, kind of like an Oh, Henry! candy bar, which supposedly pays tribute to the beloved author. (Read it here:  https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/1-the_gift_of_the_magi_0.pdf ) There is almost an endless selection of books containing his short stories. While there are too many stories to list, below are some of my favorites.  Lost on Dress Parade   is  about a young man who saves his money for ten weeks so he can go out and pretend to be a rich man for one evening....