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George Martin
Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993
George Martin is an independent historian who has written a number of books about the history of opera (including a great biography of Verdi). His account of how opera and in particular Verdi’s operas rose to prominence in San Francisco during the Gold Rush years describes a fascinating but not widely known episode in the history of the American West. Read more …
Oscar Wilde in America
Roy Morris, Jr.
Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013
Oscar Wilde arrived in America in January 1882 as a young man of 27. Over the course of the next eleven months he would travel 15,000 miles across the country, delivering a total of 140 lectures primarily on the English Renaissance, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the decorative arts. Read more …