tions, under the heading "The New Pressure Groups," is sketchy and not overly accurate. He does, however, completely avoid the type of sensationalized misinformation which has marred the work of so many and gives due credit to the fact that these organizations "have exerted a subtle influence on both heterosexual and homosexual thinking."

The article should do much to awaken literate readers from apathetic indifference toward the homosexuals in their midst, but we still await the appearance of more soundly grounded articles written from a broader knowledge of the field. Perhaps Mr. Helmer has opened the way for future and much-needed discussions of the moral, ethical, legal, and other implications of a mode of life which affects so many millions of American men and women today. W. Dorr Legg, Director ONE Institute

OSCAR

THE LETTERS OF WILDE, Edited by Rupert HartDavis, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, $15.00, 958 pp.

Oscar Wilde as a personality and as a tragedy fascinates a wide audience, and by no means only a homosexual one. In many ways, this fascination is unfortunate. I would suspect at least 90 per cent of the stereotype picture of the homosexual arty, acidly witty, superficial, sexually promiscuous, unusually dressed, responsibility-dodging, self-indulgent, money-hungry, snobbish-stems from

him.

very

This superb compilation of his letters does not give the lie to those adjectives. It is no apologia, unlike many of the subjective reminiscences by his friends. Here is Oscar plain and his story is more fascinating and powerful than ever before. As is true of Proust's Baron de Charlus, who Wilde greatly resembles, one does not have to like him to be fascinated

one

and moved. And, personally, not since reading Proust have I read as fine, moving, and artful a literary work encompassing the homosexual world as this work.

Mr. Rupert Hart-Davis, the editor, has achieved a classical starkness by letting the letters speak for themselves, and by keeping the biographical footnotes to the objective minimum. As Andre Gide remarked, sometimes one must have the courage not to say many things. The sustained restraint here results in a rare unity and a rare reality, something akin to a new art form, and many times one forgets one is reading non-fiction.

There is here also, an honesty as to homosexuality. Many of Wilde's friends are indicated as homosexual. There is none of the "discreet" editing that makes such a shambles of the published letters of T. E. Lawrence. Also, here is proven false the assertion of Havelock Ellis and others that Wilde became homosexual only after marrying. From the university letters (which the usually shrewd Havelock Ellis never saw, of course), only the most tone-deaf heterosexual could miss the homosexual banter (one fellow student being referred to as "Julia"). Wilde was obviously at least 75 per cent homosexual.

After his jail term, Wilde became very frank in letters as to his then completely homosexual life, and references to "renters" (what our slang now calls "rough trade") are found throughout the later letters. Here, embryonically, is an honestly homosexual "Within A Budding Grove," that weakest section of Proust. Beautiful youths abound ("The museum is full, as you know, of lovely Greek bronzes. The only bother is that they all walk about the town at night"), and they are plucked up and discarded or passed on, not only by Wilde but by his friends, including Lord Alfred Douglas (for Douglas and Wilde never had, nor did either ever desire,