When I finished reading "Truly Wilde" I realized that the feelings I had were similar to those I had when I finished "The Well of Loneliness." From the very beginning of the book, I knew that Dolly was doomed - and yet, I had to read about her life, her decline, her frustrations, her brilliance - and though the truth was depressing, I had to finish.

Joan Schenkar's book details an important part of lesbian herstory - a society that was part and parcel of the times.

With "Truly Wilde," author Joan Schenkar has reinterpreted and redefined the possibilities of the biographical form. Her strategy in recreating the world of Parisian intellectual and artistic salons in which Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly flourished in the 1920s - most notably Natalie Barney's Academie des Femmes - is stunningly iconoclastic, deeply compelling, and brilliantly written. From a base of scrupulous and capacious research, from interviews with primary sources and access to original documents, illustrated with a fascinating array of photographs, Schenkar uses a thematic rather than chronological approach to bring Dolly Wilde and her world to life, and to follow with fierce attention the course of her descent to a lonely death in London at the age of 45. Ms. Schenkar does not feel bound by academic niceties. Her book is rich in the odd detail - a palm reading, for instance, or a favorite recipe - that make that era and those brilliant characters as luminous as real life. In her hands, Dolly Wilde becomes a memorable and ultimately mysterious force of nature.

There is nothing like pleasure to motivate a book review and I took an enormous pleasure in reading -- and then in instantly re-reading - TRULY WILDE. This book gives such a precise and poetic view of the seductive and fascinating Dolly Wilde and such a generously ducumented look at the period in which she flourished -- a period in which conversation was still an art and identity was something that could still be invented - that you really feel yourself feeling with and for Dolly. It's an exemplary, inventive biography. And the photographs are wonderful.

Truly Wilde assumes that its readers delight in language and ideas and bring to it a certain intelligence. I presume that this refreshing approach accounts for the stellar reviews on the book jacket by such brilliant writers as Jeannette Winterson and Edmund White; I presume that it also accounts for the few, suspiciously vitriolic comments found on this site - which seem to be motivated by something other than a desire to share an opinion.

I HIGHLY recommend TRULY WILDE to all lovers of pleasure who like to think: this book, this life will reward you a thousand times over.