Oscar Wilde: The Complete Works - (Bauer Classics) #462794

Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.

Contents:

PLAYS

• Vera.
• The Duchess of Padua.
• Lady Windermere’s Fan.
• A Woman of No Importance.
• The Importance of Being Earnest.
• An Ideal Husband.
• Salomé.  
• La Sainte Courtisane.
• A Florentine Tragedy.

NOVELS

• The Picture of Dorian Gray.

[1890 magazine publication]
[1891 book publication]


STORIES

• The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
• The Portrait of Mr W. H. [1889] [1921]
• Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories.
• A House of Pomegranates.
• Poems in Prose.

POEMS

• Ravenna.
• Poems. [1881]
• The Sphinx.
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
• Uncollected Poems.

ESSAYS

• Intentions.
• The Soul of Man under Socialism.
• De Profundis.
• Lectures, Essays, and Criticism.

REVIEWS