Comparison of two biographies of the genius Oscar Wilde If someone had told Oscar Wilde during his lifetime that for the next hundred years people would still be taking the time to write about his life and his successes, he would probably have wittily declared that it is impossible for anyone to try to admire him as much as he admires himself. However, two of his biographers, Frank Harris and Barbara Belford, did just that. Harris, in 1916, sixteen years after Wilde's death, published his biography, Oscar Wilde, as a reminder of his affectionate relationship with Wilde, for whom he had been a literary editor and friend. Just last year in 2000, after a popular film remake of An Ideal Husband, Belford published Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius, a tribute to the man and the literary works for which he is famous. Oscar Wilde provides an intimate portrait of the poet, playwright and self-styled aesthete. Born a year after Wilde, in 1855, Frank Harris was much more than a contemporary. He lived in the same London social circles, met the same people and attended the same events as Wilde, often at his side. Harris's biography, which is much more an account of the dialogue between Harris and its subject than a direct narrative of Wilde's life, is directed at those outside the loop, those Victorians who misunderstood Wilde, seeing his life as a dispute. after another. Focusing heavily on Wilde's upbringing and the intense scrutiny of his lifestyle by English movers and shakers, it presents Oscar Wilde as an innocent genius whose enthusiastic love of the classics, art, words and life generally made him a victim in 1890s Victorian London. Harris uses the intuition of his… medium of paper… derived from the methods of Frank Harris. Both accounts are worth reading, as both provide a forced and fuller understanding of who Wilde really was. One hundred years separate us from the physical presence of Oscar Wilde, and eighty-four years separate the biographies of Frank Harris and Barbara Belford. . Although conceived and written independently, they manage to tell the same story. The story told is that of Oscar Wilde, esthete and artist, writer and wit, a true genius who was, like many great minds, ultimately misunderstood by the people of his time. Works Cited Belford, Barbara. Oscar Wilde: a certain genius. New York: Random House, 2000.Harris, Frank. Oscar Wilde. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. 1916.