Download or read book Oscar Wilde's America written by Mary Warner Blanchard and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1882 Oscar Wilde toured America as the "Apostle of Aestheticism". The nation was still shaken by the Civil War, and Wilde's message of regeneration through art and beauty seemed to open new horizons. In this first cultural history of the aesthetic movement in the U.S., Mary Blanchard provides an imaginative account of a neglected dimension of our history. 221 illustrations.