The eight weeks that Oscar Wilde spent in Worthing over the course of one summer have until now hardly been written about, but were in fact very significant, according to author Antony Edmonds.

His new book Oscar Wilde’s Scandalous Summer sets out the events that took place in the life of the famous writer and playwright over two months in 1894.

What was in theory a family holiday is described by Antony as a microcosm of Wilde’s turbulent life, in the three years between the time he fell in love with Lord Alfred Douglas to his imprisonment for homosexuality in 1895, the scandal of the century, which has been well-documented.

“By the time of the Worthing visit, Wilde was a very famous and successful playwright,” says Antony. “Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and A Woman of No Importance (1893) had both been great successes.

“It had taken him a while to get going as a writer. In the early days he was better known as a celebrity of the time, as a lecturer and a wit; famous for being famous, to some extent.

“Gradually things came to popular notice and acclaim.”

Wilde, his wife Constance, and two sons stayed in Worthing at The Haven, a four-story end terrace house, which is no longer standing, having been demolished in the 1960s.

Antony writes that Constance had reported to Wilde that the house was “very small”.

“Wilde wanted to get out of London because he was being pressured by the Marquess of Queensbury about his association with his son [Lord Alfred Douglas],” says Antony.

This period has never before been dissected in such detail, he writes. In fact it was given only five sentences in Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde, published in 1987.

“It is very strange that it has not been written about before, because it is such a compelling story and I think it encapsulates so many aspects of Wilde’s life just before it fell apart,” says Antony.

These include Wilde’s continuing affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (“Bosie”), who made three visits to Worthing during that summer. This was an association which would eventually precipitate his downfall.

During the holiday he was also writing what was to be his greatest and most famous work, comedy The Importance of Being Earnest.

Then there was Alphonse Conway, the 16-year-old local boy with whom Wilde struck up a relationship during his time in Worthing.

In the background was the loneliness of Constance Wilde, and her relationship with author Arthur Humphries.

“She was head over heels in love with him,” says Antony, though he adds, none of the evidence points to an affair between the two.

“It is interesting because you have got this amazing collaboration of factors coming together.”

The book, which contains a huge amount of detail including photographs and even a chronology of the holiday, has been several years in the making.

“The most exhaustive research of all that I did was to establish where The Haven [the Wildes’ holiday home] was; there was so much contradictory evidence.

“I studied letters from the Worthing period and I was able to piece together the whole period, letters that had not been looked at in detail before.

“I got all the letters from Constance Wilde to Georgina Mount Temple relating to the Worthing period. That was a goldmine of information.”

Lady Mount Temple was at the time one of Constance Wilde’s closest friends and confidants.

Through Worthing library, Antony also managed to access the local newspaper archives and researched the history of the town over a period of about four or five years.

Eight articles of his were published in the journal of the Oscar Wilde Society between 2010 and 2013, and these form the basis of the chapters of his new book.

Antony Edmonds and Oscar Wilde both attended Magdalen College, Oxford, however It is not this coincidence but Wilde’s life story that most interests him.

He says that he first became familiar with Worthing when his then girlfriend came to live in the town in 2007 and had a flat just 600 yards from where Wilde had stayed over a hundred years earlier.

“His is an extraordinary story. On the whole writers led mainly dull lives.”

  •  Oscar Wilde’s Scandalous Summer by Antony Edmonds (Amberley Publishing) is out now.