http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/46517

Truly Wilde : the unsettling story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's unusual niece

This volume is a biography of Dorothy (Dolly) Wilde (1895-1941), the niece of Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde. She was made famous by her family connections and her reputation as a witty conversationalist. Her charm and humor made her a popular guest at salons in Paris between the wars, standing out even in a social circle known for its flamboyant talkers. Dorothy was a charming, witty and volatile lesbian or bisexual woman, a passionate lover, an avid reader, and a drug addict prone to depression. She was also a prolific writer of letters -- and nothing else, despite her friends agreeing she was destined for a literary career. She survived a convent school, an alcoholic father, and an intermittently loving mother; drove an ambulance in the First World War; and spent half of her life ambling from one friend's home to another, mainly between London, where she had a flat she never stayed in, and Paris, where the love her life, the filthy rich and resolutely polyamorous American expatriate Natalie Clifford Barney, held court.

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