The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde is a 1983 novel by Peter Ackroyd. It won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1984. The novel is written in the form of a diary which Oscar Wilde was writing in Paris in 1900, up to his death. The diary itself is completely fictional, as is the detail contained, although the events and most of the characters (such as the characters of Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Ross and the Earl of Rosebery and his incarceration, at Pentonville, later Reading) are real. In this diary he looks back at
Oscar Wilde Up" (1939) and his "Autobiography" he was more sympathetic to Wilde. Of Wilde's other close friends, Robert Sherard; Robert Ross, his literary executor; and Charles Ricketts variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence. The first more or less objective biography of Wilde came about when Hesketh Pearson wrote "Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit" (1946). In 1954 Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland published his memoir "Son of Oscar Wilde", which recounts the difficulties Wilde's wife and children faced after his imprisonment. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989. "Oscar Wilde, a critical study" by Arthur Ransome was published in