I am Indestructible!: Selected Interviews with Oscar Wilde

A collection of sixty-four of Oscar Wilde's best interviews.

Oscar Wilde is the author of the most enduringly popular comedy of the nineteenth century, The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as sparkling philosophical dialogues, epigrammatic essays, and exquisitely crafted fairy tales.

Yet his friends insisted that even the best of his writing was but a pale reflection of his brilliant conversation. For Wilde, talk was 'the only proper intoxication' and 'among the supreme aims of life'. He devoted his talent to his writing and reserved his genius for his conversation.

Newspaper interviewers, realising that Wilde's talk was an excellent source of copy, repeatedly sought out the author for his 'Oscarisms' - his trademark witty phrases - as well as his views on topics ranging from poetry to politics, and acting to architecture. They found him not only at his London home, but in hotel rooms from Paris to San Francisco, strolling down Broadway or St James's Street, lounging in train carriages, and behind the walls of Reading Gaol.

Rob Marland is the editor of Oscar Wilde: The Complete Interviews (2022) and the author of Oscar Wilde's First Tragedy: The Composition, Production, and Reception of Vera; or, The Nihilists (2026). He is a member of the editorial board of The Wildean, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society.