1. Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland was born on December 1945 and is a British biographer and editor.
10 Facts About Merlin Holland
1. 2.
Merlin Holland is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde, whose life he has researched and written about extensively.
3.
Merlin Holland is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd.
4.
Merlin Holland's mother Thelma was an Australian cosmetician who became the personal beauty adviser to Queen Elizabeth II for about 10 years from the mid-1940s.
5.
Merlin Holland is the co-editor, with Rupert Hart-Davis, of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde.
6.
Merlin Holland is the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored version of his grandfather's 1895 trials.
7.
Merlin Holland has criticised Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography, Oscar Wilde, as inaccurate, particularly his claim that Wilde had syphilis and transmitted it to Constance.
8.
Merlin Holland has written The Wilde Album, a small volume that included hitherto unpublished photographs of Wilde.
9.
In July 2013, Merlin Holland gave the main address for a symposium on Oscar Wilde presented by The Santa Fe Opera.
10.
Merlin Holland's godfather was Frederick Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead, a British biographer best known for writing a biography of Rudyard Kipling that was suppressed by the Kipling family for many years, and which he never lived to see in print.