Nicholas Frankel

I am a Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, where I principally teach Victorian literature, media, and culture. I have published extensively on the Aesthetic Movement of the late-Victorian period, particularly where it concerns Oscar Wilde, about whom I have written two well-received biographies, The Invention of Oscar Wilde (2021) and Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years (2017). My annotated, uncensored edition of Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (2011) was honored twice by the American Library Association, at the Stonewall Book Awards, and other recent editions include The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Selection (2022), The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Selection (2020), The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde (2018), and The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest (2015). My other books include Oscar Wilde’s Decorated Books (2000), Masking The Text: Essays on Literature & Mediation in the 1890s (2009), and Charles Ricketts: Everything For Art (2014). Besides Wilde, late-Victorian writers and artists about whom I have written include James McNeill Whistler, William Morris, George Meredith, Aubrey Beardsley, “Michael Field,” Christina Rossetti, Charles Ricketts, the designer Owen Jones, and the poets of the Rhymers Club.