Sibling relationships are invariably fascinating and in the case of the famous, they cast a sideways light on the main character which illumines them differently. Matthew Sturgis has written wonderful biographies of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley — he inhabits the 1890s like a native — and his look at their siblings in Relative Failures gives a fresh perspective on them. The third is Howard Sturgis, brother of novelist Julian Sturgis: both his great, great uncles.
“All of them made their mark on the crowded stage of the 1890s,” Sturgis observes. “They were part of that fascinating era … when the high water mark of Victorian self-confidence was passing, old verities were coming under attack and a sense of fin-de-siècle recklessness and experiment vied with a sense of autumnal decadence and decay.”
