The Wildes

A Novel in Five Acts

By: Louis Bayard

Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers, Damian Lynch, P.J. Ochlan, Louis Bayard

From the bestselling author of The Pale Blue Eye comes a brilliantly profound and empathetic story about Oscar Wilde's wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright's imprisonment for homosexuality, told against the backdrop of Victorian England and World War I.

In September of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be happy: two beautiful sons, a stellar reputation as an advocate for progressive causes, and a delightfully charming and affectionate husband and father, who is perhaps the most famous man in England. But as an assortment of houseguests arrive, including an aristocratic young wannabe poet named Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually—and then all at once—comes to see that her husband's heart is elsewhere and that the growing intensity between the two men threatens the whole foundation of their lives.

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts revolves around that fateful summer: what happened, and what might have been. When it was exposed, Oscar's affair with Lord Alfred Douglas—Bosie, as he was known—led to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality, and the financial and emotional ruin of his family. In Act Two, Bayard reveals Constance and their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, in exile, forced to sell their possessions, leave England, and hide their identities. Act Three, from the perspective of Cyril, brings listeners into the French trenches of World War I, where Cyril must grapple with the kind of man he wants to become, while Act Four reveals Vyvyan in London, years after the war, searching for answers from those who knew his parents. And in a brilliant act of the imagination, Act Five brings the entire cast back together in a surprising, poignant, and tremendously satisfying tableau.

With Louis Bayard's trademark sparkling dialogue, paired with his deep insight into the lives and longings of all his characters—and based on real events—The Wildes could almost have been created by Oscar Wilde himself: lightly told but with hidden depths, it is an entertaining and dramatic story about the human condition.

©2024 Louis Bayard (P)2024 Algonquin Books

Critic reviews

"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."—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost

“In this witty, poignant, and richly imagined ‘novel in five acts,’ Louis Bayard takes us past the sordid scandal of Oscar Wilde and his nemesis-lover Bosie, the misbegotten libel trial that brought about Wilde’s ruin, and an aftermath of ‘dazzling martyrdom’ in repressive Victorian England, to focus instead on Wilde’s wife Constance and their sons Vyvyan and Cyril. 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

"It requires a novelist of great audacity to dare to attempt to bring Oscar Wilde back to life, and it requires a novelist of great skill, to say nothing of wit, to manage the feat persuasively. Happily, Louis Bayard is both of those novelists. As if that were not enough, The Wildes also presents us with a portrait of Oscar's wife, Constance, that is little short of breathtaking in its vibrant depth, and a recounting of the heartbreaking tragedy of the Wildes that is eloquent and fully compassionate to all its characters, certainly to the Wildes' sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, and even to (almost astonishingly) that feckless instrument of destruction Lord Alfred Douglas. I read The Wildes in an improbable state of breathless suspense, so wonderfully well has Bayard presented us with real people pressing, often excruciatingly, toward fateful decisions. This is an intoxicatingly gorgeous novel."—Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English

Wilde biography

A poignantly beautiful story of Oscar, his wife, and children. Well written with wonderful vocabulary

Another Great Bayard Historical Fiction Classic

Whenever I start a Louis Bayard book, my brain wants to automatically classify it with some sort of expectation, thinking in my classic way of Dickens, Poe, or, in this case, Wilde, and I find that Louis goes so completely off into another most unexpectedly delightful direction. He gets us to see a different side of or possibility for the tale. To tell the story from the aspect of Constance and from the two boys, Cyril and Vyvyan, makes us think about the social implications of Oscar’s story as they played havoc on his family members and the people surrounding them even long after Oscar and Constance were physically long gone from this world. Thank you for giving us another wonderful tale. It was a delightful read. Can’t wait to see what you will think of next! ❤️ The narrators were excellent, especially Elisabeth Rodgers whose voice was the perfect match for Constance.

Not what I expected

I didn’t know quite what to make of this 5-act play. It neither underscored the facts that I knew, or thought I knew about Oscar Wilde nor did it expel them. I liked the strong position taken by Wilde’s wife Constance in this iteration and wish that it hadn’t just been a wonderful, possible alternative to the truth.