Oscar Wilde, New York, 1882
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Illingworth: The Book of
Life begins with a man and a
woman in a garden.
Mrs Allonby: It ends with
Revelations.
A Woman of No Importance
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, to give him his full name was a colourful character, to say the least. A pity, then, that we only have black and white photographs of him. At least he was aware of the importance of style and the time it takes:
'I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.'
The plays
- A Woman of No Importance
- LTA3 final AS examinations in 2008 (last re-sits in 2009)
- The new AQA Victorian option for AS (first examination in 2009).
- Lady Windermere's Fan
1892 (New Mermaids edition linked here)
- An Ideal Husband
1895 (Dover Thrift edition linked here)
- The Importance of Being Earnest
1895 (Penguin Popular Classics linked here).
- The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband
(Oxford World's Classics)
- The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, A Florentine Tragedy
(Penguin Classics)
Other works
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
: Oscar Wilde (Penguin Popular Classics edition linked: other editions are available
)
- De Profundis, Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings
(link is to Wordsworth Classics edition)
Books on Oscar Wilde
- The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde
is one in a very useful series surveying current criticism.
Oscar Wilde on the Web
- The Free Library has a brief biography of Wilde and copies of some of the works online, including A Woman of No Importance.
- Biblio has a fuller biography, as of course does Wikipedia.
- The Victorian Web is an invaluable source of information on the context. There is a whole section devoted to Wilde.
- Project Gutenberg is a good place to find texts of many of Wilde's works, including most of the plays
- Bartleby has the full text of Wilde's poems.
- Bibliomania has The Ballad of Reading Gaol and most of Wilde's short stories.
- The Oscar Wilde Collection contains most of Wilde's works; the plays are in PDF format so are not easy to adapt.