Merlin Holland

Born in London in December 1945,{{Cite book|last=Holland|first=Vyvyan Beresford|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QsQvAQAAIAAJ&q=Christopher+Merlin+Vyvyan+Holland+1945|title=Time Remembered After Père Lachaise|date=1966|publisher=V. Gollancz|pages=155|language=en}} Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland is the son of the author Vyvyan Holland and his second wife, Thelma Besant.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QtNMAQAAIAAJ&q=merlin+holland+1945|title=Antiquarian Book Monthly Review|date=1984|publisher=ABMR Publications|pages=57|language=en}} He is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd.{{cite web|title=McFarlin Fellows welcome author Merlin Holland|url=http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=554|publisher=University of Tulsa|access-date=13 June 2011|date=5 April 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110505024000/http://orgs.utulsa.edu/spcol/?p=554|archive-date=5 May 2011|url-status=dead}}{{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Geoffrey|title=The importance of being Merlin|journal=The Guardian|date=24 November 2000|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/nov/24/classics.oscarwilde|access-date=12 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161010000535/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/nov/24/classics.oscarwilde|archive-date=10 October 2016|url-status=live}}

His mother Thelma was an Australian cosmetician who became the personal beauty adviser to Queen Elizabeth II for about 10 years from the mid-1940s.[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-thelma-holland-1610458.html Margaret McCall] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171216091121/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-thelma-holland-1610458.html |date=16 December 2017 }}, "Obituary: Thelma Holland", The Independent, 9 March 1995. Retrieved 16 December 2017 His paternal grandmother, Constance, changed her and her children's surname to Holland (an old family name) in 1895, after Wilde was convicted of homosexual acts and imprisoned, in order to gain some privacy from the scandal.

Holland has studied and researched Wilde's life for more than thirty years. He is the co-editor, with Rupert Hart-Davis, of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde.{{cite web|title=Merlin Holland|url=http://us.macmillan.com/author/merlinholland|publisher=Henry Holt and Company|access-date=13 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121010071342/http://us.macmillan.com/author/merlinholland|archive-date=10 October 2012|url-status=live}} He is the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored version of his grandfather's 1895 trials. (The book is titled The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde for release in the US.){{cite web|title=Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde|url=http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/26453/irish-peacock-and-scarlet-marquess-merlin-holland-9780007154197|publisher=HarperCollins|access-date=13 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120320110833/http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/26453/irish-peacock-and-scarlet-marquess-merlin-holland-9780007154197|archive-date=20 March 2012|url-status=live}}

Holland has criticised Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography, Oscar Wilde, as inaccurate, particularly his claim that Wilde had syphilis and transmitted it to Constance.{{cite journal|last=Holland|first=Merlin|title=The 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde|journal=The Guardian|date=7 May 2003|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/07/top10s.oscar.wilde|access-date=13 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131110051652/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/07/top10s.oscar.wilde|archive-date=10 November 2013|url-status=live}} According to The Guardian, Holland has "unearthed medical evidence within private family letters, which has enabled a doctor to determine the likely cause of Constance's death. The letters reveal symptoms nowadays associated with multiple sclerosis but apparently wrongly diagnosed by her two doctors. One, an unnamed German 'nerve doctor', resorted to dubious remedies and the other, Luigi Maria Bossi, conducted a botched operation that days later claimed her life."{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/02/death-oscar-wilde-wife-solved|title=Letters unravel mystery of the death of Oscar Wilde's wife|author=Dalya Alberge|work=The Guardian|date=2 January 2015|access-date=12 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202114813/https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/02/death-oscar-wilde-wife-solved|archive-date=2 February 2017|url-status=live}}

Holland has also written The Wilde Album, a small volume that included hitherto unpublished photographs of Wilde.{{cite news|last=Owens|first=Mitchell|title=On Irving Place with/Merlin Holland; The Importance of Being Honest|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/28/garden/on-irving-place-with-merlin-holland-the-importance-of-being-honest.html?src=pm|access-date=13 June 2011|newspaper=The New York Times|date=28 May 1998|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111217003559/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/28/garden/on-irving-place-with-merlin-holland-the-importance-of-being-honest.html?src=pm|archive-date=17 December 2011|url-status=live}} The book concerns how the scandal caused by Wilde's trials affected his family, most notably his wife, Constance, and their children, Cyril and Vyvyan.

In 2006, his book Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters was published, and his volume Coffee with Oscar Wilde, an imagined conversation with Wilde, was released in the autumn of 2007. Holland also wrote A Portrait of Oscar Wilde (2008), which reveals Wilde through manuscripts and letters from the Lucia Moreira Salles collection, located at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

In addition, Holland has also published features about wine and occasional articles for the magazines Country Life and The Oldie.

In July 2013, Holland gave the main address for a symposium on Oscar Wilde presented by The Santa Fe Opera. The address surveyed the popular and critical attitudes towards Wilde and his work from the end of his life to the present time. The symposium was given in conjunction with the opera company's world premiere presentations of Oscar, composed by Theodore Morrison with a libretto written by John Cox and the composer.

[http://www.ksn.com/entertainment/events-calendar/santa-fe-opera-plans-symposium-on-oscar-wilde "Santa Fe Opera plans symposium on Oscar Wilde"], ksn.com, 10 July 2013

Holland's play The Trials of Oscar Wilde, co-authored with John O'Connor and re-enacting the 1895 trials of Lord Queensberry for libel and Oscar Wilde for gross indecency, toured the United Kingdom in 2014 as a production by the European Arts Company.{{cite web|title = The Trials of Oscar Wilde|url = https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/20/the-trials-oscar-wilde-review-bons-mots-barefaced-lies|website = The Observer Reviews|date = 19 July 2014|access-date = 20 July 2014|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140720212932/http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/20/the-trials-oscar-wilde-review-bons-mots-barefaced-lies|archive-date = 20 July 2014|url-status = live}}{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28215777|title=Wilde's grandson brings scandal to stage|date=10 July 2014|access-date=10 July 2014|author=Vincent Dowd|work=BBC News|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140710055528/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28215777|archive-date=10 July 2014|url-status=live}}

Holland lives in Burgundy, France, with his second wife. His son, Lucian Holland (born 1979 to Merlin's first wife Sarah), studied classics at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Holland briefly considered changing his name to Wilde. He told The New York Times in 1998, “But if I did it, it would have to be not just for Oscar, but for his father and mother, too, for the whole family. It was an extraordinary family before he came along, so if I put the family name back on the map for the right reasons, then it's all right.”

Holland's godfather was Frederick Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead, a British biographer best known for writing a biography of Rudyard Kipling that was suppressed by the Kipling family for many years, and which he never lived to see in print. Lord Birkenhead knew Edward Carson, https://www.pbsamerica.co.uk/series/the-man-who-destroyed-oscar-wilde/ the barrister who lead the defence against Wilde's action for criminal libel against John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry.

• 1998 – The Wilde Album{{cite web|title=Merlin Holland|url=https://www.amazon.com/Merlin-Holland/e/B001HMPUHI|access-date=22 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151109231812/http://www.amazon.com/Merlin-Holland/e/B001HMPUHI|archive-date=9 November 2015|url-status=live}}
• 2003 – Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde
• 2004 – The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde

{{reflist}}

• Holland, Vyvyan (Merlin Holland, Ed.), Son of Oscar Wilde. London: Carroll & Graf, 1999. 2nd Edition.
• Nick Stafford (writer), David Hunter (director), The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, based on Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess and broadcast for the first time on BBC Radio 4 as a Saturday Drama on 28 June 2014.

• Moss, Stephen, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/nov/24/classics.oscarwilde "The importance of being Merlin"], The Guardian (London), 24 November 2000. (Profile of Holland on the publication of the new edition of Wilde's letters)
• Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/nov/24/classics.oscarwilde "The Picture of Dorian Gray is complete tosh"], The Guardian (London), 24 November 2000. (Commentary on Wilde's importance)

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Category:1945 births

Category:English biographers

Category:English people of Irish descent

Category:English people of Australian descent

Category:Living people

Category:Oscar Wilde

Category:Writers from London

Category:English expatriates in France