Oscar Wilde’s First Tragedy
By Rob Marland
Oscar Wilde’s First Tragedy: The Composition, Production, and Reception of Vera; or, The Nihilists by Rob Marland is a book forthcoming from Little Eye. This biography will be accompanied by a new critical edition of Wilde’s first play. Both volumes will be published in spring 2026.
About Vera; or, The Nihilists
At the age of twenty-six Oscar Wilde wrote his first play. A melodramatic tragedy about a plot to assassinate the Russian tsar, Vera; or, The Nihilists is as far as could be imagined from his later hits, Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. A London matinee was cancelled, ostensibly for political reasons, and the final curtain fell on the New York production after only a week, the critics branding the script ‘long-drawn dramatic rot’.
Wilde tried to forget his first tragedy, and the disastrous premiere that he described as ‘the sharpest agony of my life’.
Vera is seldom revived. It has been virtually ignored by scholars of Wilde’s work, and the ill-fated New York production dismissed as little more than a biographical footnote. But only by closely examining the composition, production, and reception of Vera can the Wilde we know today – the confident, witty, master dramatist – be fully understood. This is the complete and fascinating story of Oscar Wilde’s first, worst, and perhaps most important play.
Why read Oscar Wilde’s First Tragedy and the critical edition?
Oscar Wilde’s First Tragedy and the critical edition of Vera are based on six years of research into the play, which has uncovered material never before seen by scholars. This material includes:
- Over fifty reviews and other first-hand accounts of the premiere
- Interviews with Wilde and others involved in the first production
- Unpublished and uncollected letters by Wilde relating to the play
- Several manuscripts relating to the composition and revision of the play that have not been included in any previous edition
- The documentation of previously unnoticed allusions to works by other authors
- A contract between Wilde and Marie Prescott (the star, co-producer, and director of Vera) that post-dates the contract held at the Clark Library, Los Angeles
- Unpublished photographs of Prescott in costumes designed by Wilde
- A complete production history of the play, from 1883 to 2025
About Rob Marland
Rob Marland is the editor of Oscar Wilde: The Complete Interviews (2022) and the author of Oscar Wilde: The Season of Sorrow (2018). His research on Vera has been published in The Wildean, the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society, and Notes and Queries. He is a member of the editorial board of The Wildean.