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 is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde.[1][2] Although he is directly descended from Oscar Wilde, his last name is Holland because Wilde′s wife, Constance, changed her name to Holland, an old family name on her side to avoid shame after Wilde's trial for gross indecency, and subsequent imprisonment and fall from grace.
Holland has studied and researched Wilde′s life for the last 30 years.[1] He is the co-editor, with Rupert Hart-Davis, of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde,[2][3] and the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored version of his grandfather's 1895 trials, (also entitled The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde for release in the US).[4] Holland has criticized Richard Ellmann′s 1989 biography, Oscar Wilde, as inaccurate, particularly the claim of syphilis.[2][5]
Holland has also written The Wilde Album, a small volume that included hitherto unpublished photographs of Wilde.[3][6] The book focuses on how the scandal caused by Wilde's trials affected his family, most notably his wife, Constance, and their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, an imagined but touching conversation with Oscar, was released in the autumn of 2007.[1] Holland′s latest book is A Portrait of Oscar Wilde, published in 2008 and which reveals Wilde through manuscripts and letters from the Lucia Moreira Salles collection, located at the The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.[1]
Holland has also worked as a wine writer and occasionally written features for Country Life, and The Oldie.[1] Holland briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name back to Wilde: He told The New York Times in 1998, “But if I did it, it would have to be not just for Oscar, but for his father and mother, too, for the whole family. It was an extraordinary family before he came along, so if I put the family name back on the map for the right reasons, then it's all right.”[6]
Merlin Holland lives in Burgundy, France with his partner Emma. Merlin’s son, Lucian Holland (born 1979), Oscar Wilde's only great-grandchild, studied classics at Magdalen College,[2] and is a computer programmer, living in London.[7] 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.