This Vintage edition of The Plays of Oscar Wilde contains the plays that made Wilde one of the most important dramatists of his time, including The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the great works of modern literature.
Oscar Wilde's plays demonstrate once again why their author must be seen as both an inaugurator and a master of modernism. In his best work, the subversive insights embedded in his wit continue to challenge our common assumptions. Wilde's ability to unsettle and startle us anew with his radical vision of the artifice inherent in the self's construction makes him our contemporary.
This edition is introduced by John Lahr, author of Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton. The plays included are Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Stories) is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888.
It contains five stories:
"The Happy Prince"
"The Nightingale and the Rose"
"The Selfish Giant"
"The Devoted Friend"
"The Remarkable Rocket".

VIVIAN. Please don't interrupt in the middle of a sentence. "He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the wellinformed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, as indeed they would be fatal to the imagination of anybody, and in a short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truthtelling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence.

LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME THE HAPPY PRINCE THE BIRTHDAY OF THE INFANTA In Dorian Gray , Wilde's full-length novel, a fashionable young man sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Also included in the volume are three of the Irish master storyteller's short works.

Synopsis
In print since 1948, this is a single-volume collection of Oscar Wilde's texts. It contains his only novel, "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters. Illustrated with many photographs, the book includes introductions to each section by Wilde's grandon, Merlin Holoand, Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kibertd and Terence Brown. A comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Oscar Wilde together with a chronological table of his life and work are also included.

While imprisoned, Wilde wrote this long letter of recrimination to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. It offers fascinating insights into Wilde's life in prison and the background and psychology of a notorious affair.

This joint centennial edition of Salome and Under the Hill, united by seventeen of Beardsley's unsurpassable drawings, is a timely rehabilitation of these two all-too-often ignored fin-de-siecle texts, and constitues a volume of unadulterated Decadent Erotica which must surely stand as the apogee of its kind.
Censored, banned, and ridiculed upon publication, Oscar Wilde's Salome, written in 1892 in the French language, must now be viewed as one of the greatest of all Decadent texts; an aesthetic masterwork which has seldom been accorded due respect.
Salome is an evocation of biblical horror in which blasphemies abound. More than this, its atmosphere seethes with a dangerous erotic charge from the very outset. Relentless, hypnotic repetitions in the words, arranged in fugue candences, the tale unfolds with the inexorable acceleration of an orgasmic nightmare.
Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill, a short work commenced in 1894, but left unfinished at the time of Beardsley's premature demise, nonetheless achieves the quintessence of Decadence, an evocation of a synaesthetic pleasure dome. A unique and indispensable text for any who seek the uttermost extremes of the manifest imagination.

Cambridge scholar Cyril Graham spent his days performing in Shakespeare's plays, and being somewhat effeminate in nature, he was cast in the female roles. And then he made a rather startling discovery - the W.H. of the sonnets could be none other than Will Hughes, the boy-actor of Shakespeare's plays! But when no one shared this deep conviction, he resolved to find another way to convince them...

Four children's stories by Oscar Wilde, includes The Birthday of The Infanta, which I used to teach with in Seoul.

This poem - originally published anonymously, written after Wilde's two year's hard labor in Reading prison - is the tale of a man who has been sentenced to hang for the murder of the woman he loved. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" follows the inmate through his final three weeks, as he stares at the sky and silently drinks his beer ration. Heart-wrenching and eye-opening, the ballad also expresses perfectly Wilde's belief that humanity is made up only of offenders, each of us deserving a greater charity for the severity of our crimes.

Written originally in French in 1892, Wilde's one-act tragedy Salome was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas, inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and served as the text (in abridged form) for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. A masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement, it enacts the biblical tale of a wanton woman's erotic dance and the martyrdom of John the Baptist. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition (1894), including "A Note on Salome" by Robert Ross.

Contents
Introduction by Richard Ellmann
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lady Windemere's Fan
Salome
An Ideal Husband
The Importance of being Earnest
The Ballad of Reading Gaol

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The scene is set in an English country house â" Hunstanton (Lady Hunstanton's property). The curtains open to the terrace where we are introduced to Lady Caroline who is engaging in conversation with Lady Huntstanton's American Puritan guest Hester Worsley. Other characters are introduced, including the flirtatious Mrs Allonby, the meek Lady Stutfield and Lady Caroline's submissive husband Sir John. They discuss frivolous matters and are later joined by the powerful, charming and charismatic gentleman, Lord Illingworth who has offered the post of secretary to the fortunate Gerald Arbuthnot. Gerald's mother is invited to join the party, and when she arrives she realises that Lord Illingworth is Gerald's father. She had an affair with him twenty years ago, became pregnant and he refused to marry her, making her a "fallen woman." She is reluctant to let Gerald become Illingworth's secretary, but doesn't tell Gerald her reasons behind her reluctance...

在线阅读本书
While jailed for homosexual offenses, Wilde wrote this long, bitter letter of recrimination to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. It offers fascinating insights into Wilde's life in prison and the background and psychology of a notorious affair, but its eloquence, passion and literary excellence make it a universal statement about love, injustice and suffering.