Audiobook

Oscar Wilde from Purgatory

Hester Travers Smith

Hester Dowden, who wrote under the name Hester Travers Smith, was an Irish spiritualist medium. She claimed to have communicated with the spirits of various celebrities. In Oscar Wilde from Purgatory, she reproduces the text of her "conversations" with the Irish poet and playwright, conducted via a Ouija board and automatic writing. Wilde proves just as talkative after death as he was in life. His spirit revels in the complements paid to his work by Travers Smith and her colleagues, describes how it feels to exist without a body, and pronounces James Joyce's recently published novel Ulysses a "great bulk of filth". Listeners who are primarily interested in the conversations, rather than Travers Smith's lengthy discussion of them, are directed to Chapter 1 and the Appendices. - Summary by Rob Marland