A dispatch from Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian

On Saturday, November 7 in the morning, actor and writer Stephen Fry visited the Clark.  Stephen was in Los Angeles for a few days, and as a devoted Wildean was keen to see some of the Clark’s Wilde treasures.  He played Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film of that name and was profoundly happy to be able to handle and examine various Wilde books and manuscripts, including a holograph draft chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray and a copy of Ravenna for which Constance Wilde, Oscar’s wife, had made an embroidered cover for presentation to a male friend.

Stephen has a devoted following for his roles in various films and television programs, including Backadder and Stephen Fry in America. In the latter, televised in 2008, he travels to all 50 American states in a London taxicab. He has long been a good friend of Hugh Laurie (of House fame) from his days at Cambridge University, and has done any number of highly amusing television and theatrical bits.  Watch him on YouTube, for example, playing Robert Browning to Emma Thompson’s Elizabeth Barrett.

We hope to see Stephen back at the Clark in the not too too distant future.

photograph by Suzanne Tatian