Dolly Wilde

Dorothy Ierne Wilde, known as Dolly, was born in London three months after her uncle Oscar Wilde was arrested for homosexual acts. She never met him but idolised him far more than her own father, Oscar’s brother Willie, an alcoholic who died when she was a small child. Her mother was poor and sent her away to a convent school.

In the First World War she went to France as an ambulance driver. There she had an affair with a fellow driver, the oil heiress Marion “Joe” Carstairs, who later became famous as a speedboat racer. Though she enjoyed attracting both men and women, Dolly Wilde was a lesbian.

Between the wars she became a fixture of the Paris salons, famous for her wit and conversation – in a circle full of brilliant talkers, she was considered one of the best. Many thought she had her uncle’s gift for storytelling, but she wrote little; her only works were translations and lively letters to friends.

From 1927 until her death she was the partner of the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney, whose salon was one of the most famous in Paris. Wilde struggled for years with alcohol and heroin addiction. In 1939 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and refused surgery. When the Germans approached Paris in 1940 she fled to England. She died in London in 1941, aged 45; the cause of her death could not be established.