I just read a literary review of “Oscar’s Books,” a new biography of Oscar Wilde, by Thomas Wright.  Wright became interested in Oscar Wilde at an early age, and had read “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” twenty times before he was fifteen.  His passion for Wilde’s writing grew into an obsession “to touch every book Wilde had ever touched.” When he won a $5,000 prize from the Royal Society of Literature, he spent it all at Sotheby’s on one of Wilde’s personal copies of Swinburne’s essays and studies.

The interesting thing about this biography is that it is entirely speculation based on Wilde’s personal library, and the times of his life in which he read certain books.  There are certain aspects of this style of “biography” that will irk a lot of people, as it’s generally considered better to know than to imagine when writing about a person’s life, but there are things about this book that strike me as very interesting.  The author took the time to do extensive research into rare archives on Wilde’s book collection, and from there, learned much about the writer’s life.  True, what he didn’t learn from the archives, he suggests, but that’s what interests me: the legacy we leave through the books we own.

My grandmother once gave me twenty dollars (a very big deal at the time) to go through her gigantic library and carefully paste her professionally printed calligraphy nameplates on the inside of each cover.  It took me an entire weekend to do it, but I learned so much about her life that I hadn’t thought to ask her just by reading the titles of all of her books, by reading the clandestine notes in the margins, the greetings and professions of love on the title pages.  Needless to say, realizing what books my grandmother owned sparked some very interesting conversations between us.

Books (the actual printed kind, not just the idea) are very important to me.  I love scanning people’s bookshelves.  I love buying used books that have Polaroids and notes and shopping lists tucked inside.  I love learning something about someone through their reading habits.  I can’t imagine living in my apartment without my books (as Wilde survived in prison for two years with only a prayer book), and I can’t imagine anyone else not having a bookshelf.  It makes me wonder what someone could learn about me from my bookshelf, and what legacy I’ll be leaving through my personal library.