Merlin Holland

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Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland (born 1945, London) is a biographer and editor. He is the son of the author Vyvyan Holland and his second wife, the former Thelma Besant, and the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde.

He has studied and researched Wilde's life for the last twenty years. He is the co-editor of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, and the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored publication of his grandfather's 1895 trials. Holland is also the author of The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, a study of the Wilde-Queensberry scandal.

Holland has also written "The Wilde Album", a book about how the scandal caused by Wilde's trials affected his family, most notably his wife, Constance, and their children, Cyril and Vyvyan. In 2006, his book Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters was published, and his volume Coffee with Oscar Wilde was released in autumn of 2007.

Merlin Holland lives in Saint Martin sur Montague in Burgundy, France with his partner Emma.

Merlin’s son, Lucian Holland, is the only great-grandchild of Oscar Wilde. Lucian lives in Oxford, England and despite having studied classics at Magdalen College, is a computer programmer. Both were present at the unveiling of a statue commemorating their famous ancestor. Lucian was given rooms in Magdalen College which Wilde had once occupied.