Who is the author of “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”?

Correct option is A

The correct answer is Oscar Wilde
Introduction: "The Portrait of Mr. W.H." is a literary hybrid—part short story, part critical essay—that delves into the mystery surrounding the identity of the "Fair Youth," the "Mr. W.H." to whom Shakespeare's sonnets are dedicated. It is a work of speculative biography and aesthetic philosophy.
Information Booster:
· The author is Oscar Wilde. It was first published in 1889 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and later expanded for book publication in 1901.
· The story's plot revolves around characters who become obsessed with the theory that "Mr. W.H." was a beautiful young boy-actor named Willie Hughes, arguing that Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to him.
· The narrative is a key example of Wilde's aestheticism, exploring themes of artistic forgery, the persuasive power of beautiful lies, and the romantic, homoerotic undercurrents in literary history—themes central to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Additional Knowledge:
· William Shakespeare is, of course, the author of the Sonnets (1609) themselves, but not of this 19th-century fictionalized inquiry into them.
· A.C. Bradley was a foremost 20th-century Shakespearean scholar famous for his character-based analysis in Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), not for writing this kind of imaginative, fictionalized criticism.
· Charles Dickens wrote numerous novels and stories, but never a work titled The Portrait of Mr. W.H., which is unmistakably Wilde's in its style and preoccupations.