Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Authors, English; Art critics; Poisoners; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Such Beauty.
Its hard to put into word the beauty and wonder and humor of these for stories.

For the real follower of Wilde!

Very, very funny!
One day this summer I went Wild about Wilde!I think I purchased one copy of each of his works, and have been making my way through them all, (sometimes jumping back and forth), and Intentions is really a wonderful collection of some of his very witty, and very cutting stories.My favorite was 'The Decay of Lying' which is a subject I noticed Wilde writes about in many of his works, like in Dorian Gray.

For some reason, this book is missed but many, and I myself just found it by accident, so do yourself a favor and read it!This is a charming and delightful edition!

And if you want to read about lying in Dorian Gray:

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Well recommended - you will love it if you love Wilde!
First, this is a lovely edition and well worth the money, and it arrived right on time, actually faster than I expected.

Second, the book.

Not just a wit, Wilde was an intellectual power house.You don't have to agree with him on everything, just enjoy his ability to make his own argument.In "Pen, Pencil and Poison", read how Wilde playfully argues the question, 'is a criminal an artist?'Fascinating!

Superior book, lots of wit and it will stretch your mind.

May be the most important of Oscar Wilde's critical works!
It has been said that Intentions may be the most important of Oscar Wilde's critical works. Included in it are four essays: "The Decay of Lying," "Pen, Pencil and Poison," "The Critic as Artist," and "The Truth of Masks."

"The Decay of Lying" -- from 1889 -- is an essay couched as a dialogue that Wilde once called it a "trumpet against the gate of dullness." The substance revolves around Wilde's Aestheticism, and he argues (through one character and another) that Art is superior to Nature. . . .

"Pen, Pencil and Poison" -- from 1889 -- is a biographical essay on the notorious writer, murderer, and forger Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, who used the pen name "Janus Weathercock," and here Wilde puts forward the notion that that Wainewright's criminality reveals the soul of a true artist.

In "The Critic as Artist," -- 1890 -- The Wilde's contends that critics must reach beyond the creative work that he considers.

"The Truth of Masks" (1885) is an argumentative response to an article of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's which put forward the notion that Shakespeare had little interest in the costumes that his characters wore.

Brilliant and (as always) so well put, Wilde is a joy to read - food for the mind and soul.This is a nice well put together edition - all Wilde lovers well want.

Intentions
Intentions by Oscar Wilde. The Decay of Lying, Pen, Pencil And Poison, The Critic As Artist & The Truth of Masks. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland and his name has become synonymous with decadence from that era. Wilde's outlook on life comes through loud and clear in his works. Essential for those who want to enjoy literature while allowing it to expand the mind. ... Read more

Product Description
Lord Arthur Savile, about to be married to a sweetly innocent maiden, learns to his horror that a fortune-teller can see a crime of violence in his palm. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Typically Charming Offbeat Wilde Story
A humorous story published as part of a collection of stories by Wilde in 1891: Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and Other Stories .
At Lady Windermere's final reception before Easter, at Bentinck House, Lady Windermere's chiromantist, Mr. Podgers is quite a hit, telling people about themselves and their fortunes.

The chiromantist tells one Lord Arthur Saville that before he can marry his beloved, he must murder a distant relative. What follows is a hilarious account of Lord Saville's various failed attempts through poison , explosives etc to do the deed, before in despair , he rather murders Mr. Podgers himself.

A typically charming offbeat Wilde story with a twist in the tale

typically charming offbeat Wilde story
A humorous story published as part of a collection of stories by Wilde in 1891: Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and Other Stories .
At Lady Windermere's final reception before Easter, at Bentinck House, Lady Windermere's chiromantist, Mr. Podgers is quite a hit, telling people about themselves and their fortunes.

The chiromantist tells one Lord Arthur Saville that before he can marry his beloved, he must murder a distant relative. What follows is a hilarious account of LordSaville's various failed attempts through poison , explosives etc to do the deed, before in despair , he rather murders Mr. Podgers himself.

A typically charming offbeat Wilde story with a twist in the tale.

Don't believe superficial certainties
Lord Saville one night listens to a chiromantist who tells him he has to commit a crime, whose victim is supposed to be a relative of some kind, before being able to marry his love. The tale is full of humor and shows how he fails, systematically, in his enterprise, because he believes the soothsayer. But the more humoristic the tale becomes, the more desperate Lord Saville grows. Till one night he kills the chiromantist. He has finally been able to rebel against the prediction and this rebellion proves the prediction is a fake. But a second dimension appears in the tale. The chiromantist had been introduced to Lord Saville by some woman who invites such oddities to her parties to amuse the audience. She behaves as if she believed in those ominous birds that she calls lions. And Lord Saville was naive enough to accept this prediction as true and unescapable because it had been introduced to him by this particular woman, in this particular situation. Men must not fall in the traps of social tricks that some women hire to give some life to their social evenings that would be very dull otherwise. Who is wiser? The woman who "animates" her social gatherings with such attractions? Or the man who falls in the trap of believing such predictions? The other tales of the collection are all just as funny by showing how some people are able to go beyond such appearances and reach another level of being that is some kind of game and it becomes a trap to the gullible ones.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

excellent interpretation of Wilder's short story
This is a CBC dramatized interpretation of Wilde's short story. Taped in front of live audience, this is by far the best story- telling that has ever done to Wilde's work. Both music and sound effect are superb, and best of all, the narration and dialogues closely follow the original story. In this respect, CBC has outperformed BBC by a large degree. ... Read more

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

Product Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:THE FISHERMAN AND HIS SOUL.Every evening the young Fisherman went out upon the sea, and threw his nets into the water.When the wind blew from the land he caught nothing, or but little at best, for it was a bitter and black-winged wind, and rough waves Toss up to meet it. But when the wind blew to the shore, the fish came in from the deep, and swam into the meshes of his nets, and he took them to the market-place and sold them.Every evening he went out upon the sea, and one evening the net was so heavy that hardly could he draw it into the boat. And he laughed, and said to himself, "Surely I have caught all the fish that swim, or snared some dull monster that will be a marvel to men, or some thing of horror that the great Queen will desire," and putting forth all his strength, he tugged at the coarse ropes till, like lines of blue enamel round a vase of bronze, the long veins rose up on his arms. He tugged at the thin ropes, and nearer and nearer came the circle of flat corks, and the net rose at last to the top of the water.But no fish at all was in it, nor any monster or thing of horror, but only a little Mermaid lying fast asleep.Her hair was as a wet fleece of gold, and each separate hair as a thread of fine gold in a cup of glass. Her body was as white ivory, and her tail was of silver and pearl. Silver and pearl was her tail, and the green weeds of the sea coiled round it; and like sea-shells were her ears, and her lips were like sea-coral. The cold waves dashed over her cold breasts, and the salt glistened upon her eyelids.So beautiful was she that when the young Fisherman saw her he was filled with wonder, and he put out his hand and drew the net close to him, and leaning over the side he clasped her in his arms. And when he touched her, she gave a c... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

CONVENIENT, COMPREHENSIVE AND AUTHORITATIVE COLLECTION OF THE WORKS OF OSCAR WILDE WITH INTRODUCTION ETC. BY HIS LEARNED SON
For those in any need of Wilde at elbow (and who among us is not?), this thick brick of a book lends itself to easy reference, if, despite its format appelation, far too large a book for the vast majority of pockets.

First collected in 1948 and published in Britian by Collins, I have received the 1989 reprint, a rather substantial tome indeed which presents fairly bare bones the majority of Wilde's work, with some letters. In fact the only thing missing from this "Complete" collection of his writings may be some of his private letters, etc., which have been in fact published elsewhere, as in, for example, The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde which is edited by his grandson Merlin.

Wilde's own son Vyvyan wrote the scholarly biography and academic analysis of his own father's landmark and unequalled work. Anyone already familiar with the life of Oscar Wilde knows how deeply touching this in itself must be. Wilde deeply loved his two sons, and especially his wife, and suffered greatly their loss due to his unjust and cruel and unusual imprisonment on false charges, as witnessed here in his writings Reading Gaol and most explicitly in De Profundis, which might also be read in The Soul of Man & Prison Writings. De Profundis in this present collection was first published here by Collins completely and most authoritatively.

The nearly cold scholarliness with which this son of Wilde presents the clear facts of his father's life astounds one, and even pains one who knows the fullness of the story, or reads it here for the first time. Please see as well the excellent account in Son of Oscar Wilde for a more complete understanding of this deeply slandered and actually unknown creator of modern literary style and forms, which we have so lost in this post-modern world. We do well here to study carefully his art in the fullness of its publication, and to read the beauty of his own son's biography. A highly recommendable collection and excellent, well balanced introductory biography, with an equally excellent adjunct chronology and bibliography for further readings and resources.

Read once more Dorian Gray, the novel, and the associated short stories. Themoral tales and fairy tales are here presented, as well as the plays. The Importance of Being Earnest humorously reveals the closet lifestyle of the aristocracy, and the superficiality, unfortunately and necessarily here unannotated. Lady Windemere's Fan with lesser lightness reveals the fatal hypocrisy and fatality of upper crust British society. An Ideal Husband with some degree of humor and intrigue reveals the same, with the a revelation of the stock swindles which were then and which in Halliburton remain the basis for many a great fame and fortune. These three are fairly well represented by the BBC in The Oscar Wilde Collection (The Importance of Being Earnest / The Picture of Dorian Gray / An Ideal Husband / Lady Windermere's Fan).

This selection of plays continues of course with all of them, including a Woman of No Importance and the standard (and very poor) English translation of Wilde's prophetic play written in French for Sarah Bernhardt Salome, which again reveals the corruption and vice of the ruling classes and their destruction of true religion.

His Poems in Prose are included and various essays and letters including the important De Profundis mentioned above (which he proposed entitling in Latin for his prison and chains), as well as the earlier serio-comic The decay of Lying, A Few Maxims for the INstruction of the Over-Educated, and Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. One wonders the seriousness of his intent in writing The Portrait of Mr. W.H. as the object of Shakespeare's sonnets, and we read with interwst his Soul of Man under Socialism and his The Critic as Artist, etc.

HIs poetry is well and completely represented, including this touching dedication of a book of his poems to his dearly and well beloved wife:

To My Wife
I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
from a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One of you seem fair
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when the wind and winter harden
All the loveles land,
It will whisper of the garden
You will understand.

Wilde though dying young due to his imprisonment and exile and loss of family, survived his wife who suffered as cruelly English unmerciful justice, and this loving couple passed untold and untellable pain, here only hinted at by his son, and by his writing which hopefully will aid us to glimpse the deep and famously paradoxical truth of Mr. Oscar Wilde.

Read the book. ... Read more

Product Description
Epigrams, aphorisms, and other bon mots gathered from the celebrated wit’s plays, essays, and conversation offer an entertaining selection of observations both comic and profound. Organized by category, the nearly 400 quotes range in subject from human nature, morals, and society to art, politics, history, and more. A superb compilation, ideal as both an introduction to Wilde and as a treat for devotees.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Oscar Wilde is still hip and fab
Wit and Wisdom is just it!I took to bringing this book with me to work-- it is good for a smile.Oscar Wilde wrote some awfully enlightened things--this book is terrific!

A fun little read
This is a very slim little volume of Oscar Wile's more well-known quotations. I'ts just a fun little read and may be a useful reference when writing and you need a accurate Wilde quote. I keep mine around and many folks who visit just like thumbing through it. It can be a conversations starter. This is not a biography of Wilde's life and works.

Small but fun
This book was a little smaller than I expected but if you are a Wilde fan you will certainly enjoy it!

Some of the controversial quotes are sure to get a response if you try them as Facebook status messages. :)

Very intersting little book...
...not as much to it as I had thought and the cover of mine was not as shown here but..the book I ordered was used and probably an older Dover edition. BUT that doesnt matter. You get nothing but great quotes and thoughts here from one of the geniuses of literature.
Thin book. Not very much to read but nice to own and refer to. Memorable.

Useful Resource
Oscar Wilde was one of the most brilliant men to ever live and his oeuvre definitely deserves a quote book of its own. I realize that he has several but I bought this one recently and on the cheap (I got mine used from a z shop). Here the great playwright's observations are subdivided into chapters concerning men, women, marriage, youth, sin, religion, journalism, wealth, England, America etc. It's a concise collection but contains nearly 60 pages of priceless insight. Wilde sums up a large amount of human nature almost effortlessly via the words of the characters found in his works. In fact, if you ever need a source regarding just about anything cultural he's a wonderful authority. It's too bad he did not live in our times as his irreverence would have been better appreciated and celebrated--at least by those of us who are not politically correct. Rest in Peace, hero. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Different
The average work about socialism talks about such dry topics as economics and politics. This essay doesn't do any of that. It goes into art, and even pseudo-psychology (one could say). It covers a broad variety of topics in a short amount of pages. I agree with almost everything said in this book. It's definitely worth reading and will really make you think.

Flowery words that led to horror
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is widely remembered as a great man of letters. In this 1891 essay, the great man turns his thoughts to what the world would be like if private property were to be outlawed. He foresaw that poverty and want would instantly and permanently disappear, while government would melt away, and the individual would be freed from any compulsion to do anything that he or she did not want to do. An age of art and beauty would arise, as the individual would become supreme. "It will be a marvelous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows."

Such lofty thoughts! Such flowery words! Such beautiful dreams! What could any man have against it? Well...basically...reality. Gone are the days when rich and cultured Fabians sit around tables making beautiful and impractical schemes.

We have seen communism tried all around the world, resulting in Gulags, and Killing Fields, and Cultural Revolutions - and poverty, and oppression, and death. Such flowery thoughts as these penned by Oscar Wilde were beautiful when they were first penned, but now they merely remind one of how such dreamers led millions and millions of their fellow human beings into the horror that real communism is.

This book was writen, 100 years ahead of his time
I read this book, translated to the portuguese, here in Brazil.This book was writen, in XIX century.About socialism, this book is prophetic.
This book doesn't talks, only about socialism, but also about other things.This book is short, very easy to read, and even after more than 120 years later, this book is still, better than many other options to read about socialism. ... Read more

Product Description
The master of wit and irony

Published here alongside their evocative original illustrations, these fairy tales, as Oscar Wilde himself explained, were written “partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy.” ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Happily Ever After?
The fairytales of Oscar Wilde represent the very best of this genre. Any fairytale worth its salt will convey something to us about the human condition, and it will not be devoid of a moral point or two. What makes the reading of fairytales into a tedious enterprise in the long run is their all too predictable outcome: "and they all lived happily ever after." The facts of the human existence make it plain that this is not how things usually turn out. Lasting happiness is as rare as the blue rose; thwarted hopes and death, hypocrisy and injustice are the realities facing us each day, something of which Oscar Wilde never loses sight. Therefore, they do not always live happily ever after in Oscar Wilde's dark and gripping fairytales.

BAD SERVICE OF MANY-BOOKS FREE SHIPPING
I bought this book with another one in order to get a free shippingcost. But one of the books was cancelled due to amazon's suppliers don't have that book. So, amazon sent the available book with shipping cost even thoughit was not my problem.

BAD SERVICE of many-books free shipping

Read Please
I'm not even an Oscar Wilde fan.His Portrait of Dorian Grey bored me to death, then I picked up his complete fairy tales and came back to life.

Simply put, these are parodies of the generic fairy tale...they're funny, clever, and satiric while at the same time managing to be genuinely moving.

What I like most about this collection is how playful Wilde is with language.You can just tell he enjoyed writing the collection which actually does make you feel lighter while reading it.

Beautiful
The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde's most popular work of fiction for over a hundred years now.But his work of short fiction is also loved.The Complete Fairy Tales features Wilde's best fanciful stories.He draws you in with his lyrical writing and sprinkles otherwise sweet childhood fairy tales with darkness, symbolism and even sensuality.My favorites are "The Happy Prince," "The Nightingale and the Rose," "The Selfish Giant," "The Young King," and "The Star-Child."The stories moved me and made me think.Even though most childhood fairy tales and nursery rhymes have hidden messages and moral to the stories, Oscar Wilde managed to add his own unique voice.Highly recommended...

the complete fairy tales of oscar wilde
OH!what a joy to have found these.i am a fan of the fabulous mr. wilde and i wasn't aware that he wrote fairy tales.they are deeply touching and made even more so when you realize that he wrote them for his children. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a fully illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde's classic poetic account of his imprisonment following his sensational trial for homosexual offences. The poetry is rich in human sympathy and infused with the author's suffering. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

About the Heritage Press Edition
Heritage did a brilliant job creating this book for Wilde's poem.

A bright red slipcase, bright red page edges with slate gray hardback boards stamped in a wall and window motif.

The Zhenya Gray lithographs are stark and but feathery and delicate in their textures. The illustrations exist in a fancy/spare interior: lots of white space, heavy cream paper, red ink chapter headings.

Brilliant poem, but a poor editing job
The Ballad of Reading Gaol is truly a fascinating poem.Wilde's valorization of the tragic murderer, "...each man kills the thing he loves... the kindest use a knife because the dead so soon grow cold", provides a poignant commentary on the transience of love.However, this book is marred by what seem to be terrible typos: "But their were those amongst us all..." "And knew that, had each go his due..." "Mad mourners of a corse!"I haven't read any of the other versions of this poem, and can't tell you if they're better, but for the extra money this costs, I expected more from the publisher.Five stars for the poem, but only one for the presentation because of its errors.

One of poetry's great masterpieces
Essential for any lover of great poetry, and certainly for any fan of Oscar Wilde is his great poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Scarcely the only thing he wrote after his return from his notorious 2-year prison term, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a moving and tragic account of one man's suffering. One could go on and on - writing hundreds of pages in essay form - about the indignities and injustices of prison life, but this goes toward saying it much better than any ivory tower intellectual argument ever could. Wilde, winner of the infamous Newdigate Prize For Poetry at Oxford University, had long been an immaculate poet - an a born writer - but he practically anandoned the form after his marriage and the start of his career as a playwright in the early 1890's (aside from that strange amalgram of a poem, The Sphinx.) And yet, this is almost exclusively the only thing Wilde wrote after his release before his untimely death in 1900. Thankfully, the great artist went out with a bang. The Ballad fuses some of the best and clearest writing I have ever read in the English language with a poetic sensibility and a true and tragic sense of real suffering, thereby creating one of the great poems of all-time.

Many anthologies of Wilde's writings are available, and perhaps buying a book that simply includes this lone poem is questionable. I definitely suggest that you go for a Complete Works if you are new to the author; however, if you'd like a travel-worthy copy of certain smaller works - such as this poem - then editions such as this will serve you well. Besides, this edition has as well those beautiful paintings to go along with it - something I'm sure Oscar himself would've loved.

Key readingforWilde enthusiast
As a student of Wilde'slife and works, I find this is essential reading. Who needs Shakespeare to outline tradgey? Wilde was imprisoned after a second trial (the first was a no decision). He was confined in the horridEnglish jails for two years. "The wretched prisoner is then left aprey to the most weakening, depressing and humiliating malady.... punishedwith the greatest severity and brutality. Each and all these things I hadto transform into a spirtual experience." The ballad

outlines thehorrors he and others endure who are prisoners of conscience. A terribletragedy. ... Read more

Product Description
Continuously in print since 1948, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde has long been established as the most comprehensive and authoritative single–volume collection of Wilde’s works available, containing his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays, and letters—all in their most authoritative texts. Edited and introduced by Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, this handsome volume also includes a comprehensive bibliography and a chronology of Oscar Wilde’s life and work. With an Introduction by the editor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Oscar Wilde's The Man
I should write another review for Edgar Allan Poe sometime (I frequently refer to both Poe and Wilde as "The Man")...but first, Oscar Wilde's anthology.

Wow, I've probably still more than half of this collection to get through, though I've read "De Profundis" (Mr. Wilde's 80-page letter to Bosie, written while he was in prison) several times. Over, and over, from beginning to end, and for some reason, it gets better and better with each read.

As Oscar Wilde states himself (is there a more brilliant wit to quote?): "If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

I've read some of the poems, as well as "The Canterville Ghost" and "The Portrait of Dorian Gray"...I look forward to re-reading those, and discovering the gems I've missed so far!

Satisfied
I am a big fan of Oscar Wilde so this is definately a must have for literary lovers of all kinds. The only thing I would say is that the pages are extremely thin and brittle, so it is very easy to tear off one of the pages or something of that nature.

I'm a different person now
I STOLE THIS BOOK FROM THE LIBRARY BECAUSE IT'S THAT GOOD!
I THEN BURNED MY LIBRARY CARD BECAUSE IT'S THAT GOOD!
I AM NOW A MURDEROUS THIEF BECAUSE IT'S THAT GOOD!

Good deal.
This was a good deal.Oscar Wilde's writings have inspired many people to create their own great works.That's what it is all about.

The Best Ever!
If I am in a bad mood, Oscar Wilde will pull me out. I have missed subway stops and stayed up too late, rereading his wonderful works. Be they hysterically funny, gut-wrenchingly sad, or simply depressing, the writing is so brilliant, I am always drawn to a higher plane. This new edition is lovely.


Christina Britton Conroy, author of ONE MAN'S MUSIC ... Read more

Product Description
Vera - or, The Nihilists is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Oscar Wilde is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Oscar Wilde then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Read this wondering about early Wilde
Of course, its not like his later works, but it was interesting to read, one can see the future Wilde longing to move forward...

In some ways much more intellectual and less farce...

But his intelligence makes it worth the read, and I enjoyed reading one play of his that very few ever have the opportunity to even hear about.

Wilde's first play!
I bought The Importance of Being Earnest for a friend's birthday and found this play by accident.I had never known or thought about Wilde's first play before, until finding it here on Amazon, (what a great book store!), I'm half way through, and I'm impressed.Its actually good to read, as its not some social commentary, but a very literary work, there are many elements from other historical works here, which I have read up on to understand more, and that's one of the reasons I like it, it challenges me and makes me think.

Wilde does that to people!If you are just looking for some witty remarks, try The Importance of Being Earnest but if you want a little more, add this to your order, as I did, and read something different.

Truly recommended!

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

An experience!
Other reviews before me have done a better job on the literary and artistic value of Vera, so I wont offer any arts review.

I ordered and read this play because it was Wildes first, and was interested to read and imagine it staged, and compared it mentally to his other well known works that I enjoyed, like the Importance of Being Ernst, etc.This, to me, was a far superior play - it was not a satire in the way we think of Wilde, it was a very intellectual and fascinating work, that I read 3 times at one sitting.

A great play!I wish I could have seen it staged, all I can add to you, all I can offer, is the hope you will take this opportunity and read it.Its well worth it, and deserves an audience.

If you are a Wilde lover, you will want to read it, and if you are not, perhaps this will truly impress you.

His first play!
What a joy to read Wilde's first play.Wilde took London by storm with his first commercially successful comedy, Lady Windermere's Fan. The combination of dazzling wit, social criticism, sumptuous settings and the theme of a guilty secret proved a winner, both here and in his next three plays, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and his undisputed masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest.But Vera is different, brilliant in its combination of Romeo and Juliet AND Macbeth - it really needs to be re-discovered!You won't regret reading this play, and this is a great edition too!

Oscar Wilde's First Play
Oscar Wilde's first play, written in 1880-it is described by Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland - in the introduction to "Complete Works of Oscar Wilde" as " A rather immature play, which ran for one week in New York, and never reached the boards in London".

It is weak and clichéd in some parts but not without flashes of brilliance in others. Beautiful peasant girl, Vera Sabouroff joins a fanatical band of Nihilists, to avenge her bother, Dmitri, who is excelled by the Tsar.She becomes their heroin and Russia's most wanted assassin. The Nihilists are joined by Tsarevitch Alexis, who after the assassination of his father, becomes Tsar, and is thus marked for assassination by the Nihilists. Vera, who has fallen in love with the Tsarevitch, is chosen to carry out the operation to assassinate Alexis, who has embarked on a string of reforms. What follows is an ending, which mirrors Romeo and Juliet as Vera takes her own life to `save Russia'.
The hallmarks of the play are the wit of the Tsar Senior's Prime Minister Paul Maraloffski, and Vera's Lady Macbethesque speech where she steels herself to assassinate Alexis, before turning from Lady Macbeth into Juliet.
It lacks the finesse of Wilde's later plays like The Importance Of Being Earnest , Lady Windermere's Fan and Salome , but is interesting as part of a study into the development of Wilde's work.
... Read more

Product Description
The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde - psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to a alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.Amazon.com Review
Richard Ellmann capped an illustrious career in biography (hisJames Joyce isconsidered one of the masterpieces of the 20th century) with this lifeof Oscar Wilde, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Awardand Pulitzer Prize on its original publication in 1988.Ellmann's account of Wilde's extravagantly operatic life as poet,playwright, aesthete, and martyr to sexual morality is notable notonly for the full portrait it gives of Wilde, but also for Ellmann'sassessment of his subject's literary greatness; both aims are servedby a plethora of quotations from Wilde's own work andcorrespondence. Wilde straddled the line between the Victorian age andthe modern world as he did everything in life ... with impeccablestyle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

On rereading it after twenty years . . .
I first read Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde" shortly after it was published more than twenty years ago. Reading it again has proved even more a pleasure. Not only is this the definitive biography of Wilde, it is the definitive literary biography of anyone. Ellmann's deep understanding of Wilde and his ability re-create the times Wilde lived in renders passages that are often breathtaking. To be reading about the writing of "De Profundis" and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" on the same day that a judge struck down Proposition 8 made me think about how Wilde would have been regarded had he only lived twenty or thirty more years. A hundred and ten years after his death, he is even more relevant in so many ways. This book is beautiful, from the writing to the type to the binding. You can say of Wilde, Ellmann, the book itself: they don't make 'em like this anymore. Perhaps one of my ten favorite books ever.

A Man Ahead of His Time
Ellmann's portrait of Wilde--the Irish scholar, poet, playwright, wit, aesthete, and "posing sodomite"--is a masterpiece.It won two awards upon its original publication in 1988, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics' Circle Award.At 589 pages of text in the paperback edition (not including notes, bibliography, two appendices, and the index), this will stand as perhaps the most definitive biography of a quite colorful man who had the unhappy talent of taking like a moth to the flames of his Victorian era.He could chat up a room, dress to the nines, act camp, and deal in rough-trade dalliances with homosexual prostitutes when "gross indecency," homosexual acts not amounting to sodomy, were still considered a crime.Indeed, he was imprisoned for two years of hard labor (1895-97) when the father of his longtime but faithless lover decided to make a scapegoat of him.Today we might view him more as an Elton John or Brian Epstein, a successful man now able to enjoy society's gains in tolerance.

Wilde's literary output was not vast, when compared to that of some others.As he himself boasted, "I put my genius into my life, and only my talent into my works."Yet he is well remembered for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his play The Importance of Being Earnest, and his 50,000-word De Profundis (the last of these a long letter of recrimination to his fickle lover, Lord Alfred Douglas).Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1881 and had two sons with her, but he could not fairly be described as a family man and he ended his life apart from them.After he was released from prison he quickly left England for the continent, never to return, wandering the streets of Paris alone and spending what little money he had on alcohol.He died in 1900 at the age of 46, from spinal meningitis of uncertain etiology.Ellmann claims it was syphilitic in nature, but it also might have stemmed from an injury in jail that burst his right ear drum.After a nine-year burial elsewhere, Wilde's remains were transferred to the Père Lachaise Cemetery inside the Parisian city limits.This book contains many fine pictures of his life, including that of his tomb--adorned by a modernist angel whose male genitalia were vandalized, only to be replaced eventually by a silver prosthesis.Even more than a century after his death, Wilde still excites controversy.

The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man...is dreadful. OW
Here's some background; Richard Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde," was my personal selection for reading in the now infamous DFW Literary Society's book club. As such, I kind of felt a extra bit of attachment and responsibility to how the book reached and found others. Up front, the biographical parts of Oscar Wilde's life were very interesting and engaging. The parts were Ellmann delves into literary criticism, not so much.

I've always found literary lives and artistic souls quite interesting and entertaining. What I had hoped to get out of Ellmann's "Oscar" was something akin to this deliciously entertaining book: John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography, but alas, it read closer to this: Lives of the Poets. "Lives of the Poets," is one that you don't want to tackle unless you really like poetry. It's not an easy read. Neither is "Oscar."Ellmann keeps the readers attention rapt when he engages in the details of Wilde's life and the brilliant candle he was early on and the train wreck of a life he seemed to seek out. It was almost like watching a reality show on Anna Nicole Smith except Wilde was talented, smart, witty, had something to say. They both very much liked men though and had campy tastes so the similarities are there.

Reading through "Oscar Wilde" will leave the most loquacious and eloquent speech-i-fiers reaching for a dictionary on most each and every page. There are some top dollar word choices in Ellmann's book which makes me think he developed a way to talk and communicate over the years that only reached a select set of University professorial readers. If you are an English PhD you will know doubt want to rank Ellman's "Wilde" with a Wildean excess of stars: five I'm thinking.

So our book club read, "Oscar Wilde" to the bitter end and we held a trial replete with judge, juror, prosecution, and defense. We put on trial again our dear Oscar and held him up to modern societal standards and found on the whole...3 votes against liking Oscar, 0 on his behalf. As you will read, should you dare try to crack open this book, Oscar was not so much into the responsibilites of life or working for a living or taking an egalatarian view of others--Oscar lived for the aesthetic beauty and was into style and wit and causing a scene. In many ways he was a large part of killing off the Victorian era through his aesthetic movement and connection to the decadents.See now I've lost you when I start throwing out high falutin' literary terms. I should have stuck to Oscar's life as should have Ellman. It's far more intersting.

Cut the book to half the size and focus on the drama and meaning behind Oscar's short time on this earth and to me Ellmann would have had one dandy of a book. As it is, you'll be able to tackle 10 pages at a time until Ellmann starts addressing Oscar's life. Not recommended as a book club read but do hold a mock trial for Oscar and dress up like dandies and bring flowers. That's all the rage--not Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde," so much.

Very complete and well written biography
I am a biography buff and am really enjoying this book.I have to read it with a dictionary but I like that.It is a very complete and heady biography.Check it out if you really want to sink your teeth into the life of Oscar Wilde.

Gets better with each reading
Ellmann's biography of Wilde is just about everything you can hope for: very richly detailed, extremely well written, and practically radiating with a love of the writer and his work. Wilde himself comes alive as a three dimensional figure, not an "icon" (and therefore, two dimensional figure) of any particular literary, social, or political movement. Too many critics have used Wilde for their own purposes and therefore diminished him. Ellmann respects Wilde--and the truth about Wilde--too much, and that integrity sets this book apart.

As a bonus, Wilde's entire literary and social circle come to life, including of course the redoubtable Bosie and the poor choices Wilde made (especially in his foolish litigation against Bosie's father). As a whole, the book does have an emotional wallop, as Wilde's genuine genius pays off with literary success, but like his character Dorian Gray, there was a very unseemly reality beneath the glitter, which brought his career and finally his life to a terribly cruel end.



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Product Description
This volume of Poems and Poems in Prose inaugurates the Oxford English Texts Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. It provides texts of Wilde's one-hundred and nineteen poems and poems in prose, including twenty-one never published in his lifetime, together with the publishing history of each poem, and a detailed commentary on allusions and echoes, imagery, and points of biographical interest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK
This book is a sham. It is not the complete works of Oscar Wilde but, instead, a collection of sections.

MAJOR defect
1) The table of contents were messed up. For example, instead of "Chapter One...[title of story/play]" it was literally "Chapter One...Chapter One".

2) The stories/plays did not have headings. The "Chapters" would end mid-sentence and start mid-sentence, without any sort of connection whatsoever.

Oscar Wilde is a great author, and if you want to do him any justice, buy the Collins Publication instead.

random & time wasting
This is not a sensible product. It is a mess of randomly scanned sections with no titles or headings. Do not waste your time with this book, I'm sure there has tobe a more organized collection of Oscar Wilde. General Books should be ashamed of their unmatchable laziness.

False advertising for a great poet
This travesty of a book is just a collection of completely illegible sections. There are no headlines, and no text to speak of. Unless you are well familiar with exactly how to scan, extract, and all other kinds of complicated computer procedures, you are left with something that ressembles shredded newspaper articles, assembled at random. They are selling you computer links under pretense of being an actual book. If I wanted to read the blasted thing online, I would not have ordered a bound book in the first place!

I was misled by the multitude of positive reviews here, but it seems to me now that all of them have forgotten one crucial thing: they were supposed to review the PRODUCT, not the writer. We all love Oscar Wilde, or we would not be perusing this page to begin with. The issue is not how great his works were, but what kind of product this book is, and in my opinion, it cannot be called a book at all.

Open it up, and try to make sense of out the gibberish inside. I have no desire to sit and work out all the intricacies of OCR and PDF files; I simply want to curl up with a good book. I am never going to order from this fraudulent company known as "General Books" again, but am instead going to invest in a better, albeit more expensive, collection of the great authour's works. Unless you want to sit endless hours by the computer to read a "book", I suggest you do the same.

Fine One-Volume Collection
For anyone who wants to read the most of Wilde, this is a well-made yet inexpensive choice. This is not remotely an effort to examine Wilde - his life, his times, his inspirations - as much as his work, so be sure your goal is strictly to read his work. In that respect, however, you can't go wrong. ... Read more

Product Description
This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

I love this stuff!
I guess being of Italian blood makes me too sentimental and that is why I enjoyed this play so much. I am sure people think that love stories are mostly a "dime a dozen" but give me a break! I loved it. I've read other reviews which bring in "Romeo and Juliet", no! This is not Shakespear it's Wilde!!

Wilde's way with words is so impressive, that the play begs to be presented.
What a joy to discover this play!I was puttering about on Amazon and purchasing a copy of The Importance of Being Earnest for a friend for their birthday, when I found this Wilde play.It's not at all like Earnest, and should not be read like a social comedy, however its genius is still Wilde, clearly.

The major theme is emotions, love, revenge, and hatred - and they are not treated in a funny way, quite the reverse.Still, the dialogue is the gift that we get when we read the Duchess, Wilde's way with words is so impressive, that the play begs to be presented.

But, I'm happy to just read it again, knowing that since the folks who buy tickets to Cats wont be paying to watch The Duchess of Padua and therefore it will not go on.

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

I really enjoyed this play!
I see that one reviewer has done a good job explaining the play, so I wont do that again, just give you my feedback.

1) this is a great edition, if you were wondering

2) you are not likely to see this play as most of Wildes' plays these days that are produced are the well known ones (and nothing wrong with that) so it is very worth reading

3) the play is full of Shakespeare and its a joy to read and clue in to the different Shakespearean undercurrents, like a cultural detective - lots of fun

4) its Oscar Wilde, and if you have not read or see it, you owe it to yourself to do so!

Well recommended!

Known as the Italian Play
This is a treasure - often never seen by average audiences, so its a joy to read.It was Wilds first major work put on, but not really discovered until after Lady W's Fan.This is Wilde exploring self-denying - as he was at the time, at least from a public point of view.Many deep emotions are explored here - from love and hatred, revenge and revulsion.

Great cover and great edition, very good for the Wilde fan and collector.

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Product Description
'I have nothing to declare,' Wilde once told an American customs official, 'except my genius.' A good part of that genius is evident in the essays and poems included in this volume. There is the intellectual genius of "The Soul of Man under Socialism", in which he clearly foresaw the dangers of economic bureaucracy and state-worship: for Wilde, socialism meant liberation and individuality, not enslavement. Then there is the emotional genius of "De Profundis", the long, introspective and often hostile letter he addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. And there is the poetical genius of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", in which Wilde's generous nature could movingly express for another's misery the sorrow he found it hard to express for his own. This collection contains, too, many examples of that humorous and epigrammic genius which captured the London theatre and which, by suddenly casting light from an unexpected angle, widened the bounds of truth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

A post-Miller reading of De Profundis
Who never ate his bread in sorrow
Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow.
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers!

As I asked in my blog's entry today, When will the counter-jihadists or the white nationalists realize that only through what Solzhenitsyn called the development of the soul we will be able to understand the whys of today's crisis? Only after they suffer The Crash. After that, a few of them might become familiar with the legacy of Alice Miller...

I am so surprised. Fifteen years ago I read Oscar Wilde's most profound, confessional book. But like the rest of mankind I was blind and did not see the obvious. Today I reread my notes of a 1943 Spanish translation of De Profundis and couldn't believe how much I have changed since 1995.

I discovered Alice Miller in 2002. Her books changed my life. These days I reread a newer, albeit identical copy of De Profundis that was at my family's library and a whole new Wildean universe emerged. How could I have read Wilde in the dark before the transforming experience that represented Miller?

The real title that Wilde chose for this letter-book was Epistola in Carcere et Vinculis. It is a shame that, although Wilde constantly mentions in this epistle to his former boyfriend Alfred Douglas, "Bosie", that he would soon make it reach Bosie's very hands, Wilde never dared to deliver De Profundis to him.

Wilde's De Profundis is actually two books inside one cover: an accusative and self-accusative epistle and a soul-searching incursion unrelated to Bosie, where Wilde writes page upon page about "Christ". All of this idealization of Jesus only reflects Wilde's literary and artistic mind, who always strove to look for beauty. But there's something real in his spiritual quest. Unlike the Greek gods the new religion includes pain, the key to open the door to know oneself. It's pain what made Wilde's soul to flower at prison. Wilde met deep pain doing hard labor: it was there where he had to go though the agonies of losing the right to see his children forever (Wilde also lost his personal library; and felt like a zoo animal when exposed, with his prison uniform, at a train station before a laughing crowd). When I hit Wilde's phrase "And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing" I couldn't help but remember how, when I was still a minor and lost everything--my family, my career and even my mind--, a high school pseudo-friend mocked at me.

What struck me the most in this second, mature reading of De Profundis is that through his turbulent conflict with Bosie Wilde behaved like a pathetic dumb. While Wilde fully acknowledges the dumbness, he fails to confess that the reason for extreme dumbness is Eros, or rather, a sort of pathological Eros. Sex is the giant piece missing in the puzzle in De Profundis.

More serious is that Wilde never developed a good amount of hatred. He lived under the sky of regarding as highly sinful the legitimate feelings of hatred. Hence he could never really break away from Bosie, not even after he was released from prison!

Thanks to Miller, I realized that hate, not acting-out hatred but legit hate, is the way out of unhealthy relationships and entanglements. Susan Forward has also written books about the legit hatred we must feel toward our abusive parents before being capable of breaking away from a hellish relationship with our partner. Let me quote the words of Andreas Wirsén, a Swede lover of literature whose life also was transfigured by Miller:

"That the author is secretly smuggling out and reworking, often lying about and numbing, their abusive emotional childhood is something Alice Miller tends to imply when dealing with works of art, a mode of thinking we as her readers easily slip into, isn't it? That Kafka's work is basically explainable as artistic dramatization of a child's insecurity about his parents true agenda, that the vampiric women of Baudelaire's poems are in fact his emotionally unavailable and seductive mother... --this is still the only opening to Baudelaire's work I can stand, the only way in which I can read his work with interest. In this way, artistic work after Alice Miller demands a new openness and consciousness in the producer. We can't only chew and chew the unworked-through emotions from our childhood and find creative ways of repackaging them, then call it Art. It's a new game now." (end of Wirsén quote)

Of course, Wilde lived before Miller was born. Following Miller I surmise that Wilde must have had an abusive childhood. It's the only way to explain why he allowed to be treated so grotesquely bad by his destructive pseudo-ephebe lover ("pseudoephebe" I say since Bosie was no longer an adolescent when he met Wilde).

In a mere book-review I cannot introduce the revolutionary psychological views of Miller. I devoted the third book of my unpublished Hojas Susurrantes series to it. Here I am writing for those who have already read, and assimilated, Miller. Miller readers will readily understand why Wilde's very repetitive phrase in De Profundis "your noble father" only reflects that Wilde was immersed in poisonous pedagogy.

Bosie never had what Miller calls an "enlightened witness", although he seems to have looked very hard for it in the fatherly person of Wilde. I cannot blame Wilde because very few souls, if any, had an enlightened witness in 19th century England. Had Wilde been Bosie's witness, he would have recommended him to write a long, vindictive letter to his abusive father, just what Kafka would do in 1919 (what Sue Forward recommends to her psychotherapy clients). But throughout De Profundis it is clear that both Wilde and Bosie were absolutely clueless about the nature of the problem. Wilde even reproaches Bosie for trying to expose publicly the abusive behavior of Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensberry.

Wilde himself never had an enlightened witness. In fact, his death was virtually a suicide since, once released from prison, Wilde drank a lot, including absinthe, and died prematurely at forty-six.

Likewise, Bosie never found an enlightened witness. In fact, after Wilde died Bosie married and abused his only child, Raymond, so badly that he schizophrenized him. I find it scandalous that psychotherapist Daniel Mackler claims having assimilated Miller and, at the same time, he buries his head deep into the sand as to the schizophrenogenic-parent theory, as I rebuke him in a YouTube video. Coward or pseudo-readers of Miller aside, it's remarkable to what extent deep psychology has advanced since Wilde's De Profundis written in 1897 and Miller's most comprehensive book, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence, published a hundred years later, in 1997.

Unlike Andreas Wirsén, I am no lover of literature. However, I loved those splendid passages in De Profundis that reminded me Solzhenitsyn's chapter "The Soul and the Barbed Wire" in his immortal Gulag. Wilde's De Profundis is probably the best in-depth, soul-surfing text that could be written by the end of the 19th century. But there's no question that we need a 21st century writer that advances the Miller paradigm further; for instance, by analyzing the great figures in literature under "the new game" that Wirsén talks about above.

At the end of the unabridged De Profundis (the available texts I've seen in the net are censored) Wilde blew up everything by writing to the very one who ruined his life in conciliatory terms, and even suggesting he would met Bosie after leaving prison! Again, the fundamental sin of pre-Millerian humans is the prohibition to hate, say, as I openly hate Teresa.


Final note about my first reading of De Profundis:

Yesterday I read my 1995 handwritten notes within my old copy. I wrote those notes seven years before my inner transformation took place.

It does not cease to strike me my former blindness in psychologicis. During my first reading of De Profundis I didn't see anything of what is crystal-clear to me by now. Fifteen years ago I almost blamed myself, following Wilde's own words, for my former hatred toward those who destroyed my life during my teens. Following Wilde, I also blamed myself for the many soliloquies I had had in my vain efforts to process the pain.

Now I know that due processing of the pain can only come with the advent of a true enlightened witness, or, alternatively, when we find that witness after doing an emotional contact with our inner child. This happened to me after reading Miller: a witness that neither poor Wilde nor poor Bosie had.

A great edition of this under read book.
A great edition of this under read book.I'm not going to comment on the content, other reviewers have done such an expert job that I would look very nonliterary.I can say two things:

1) I sat and thought about this book for a long, long time.To have had a mind and soul to write those lines would be worth anything, to have had this mind and soul to speak with would be amazing.

2) this is a beautiful edition, quite delightful and perfect for the sentiment.

Enjoy!

Great addition to any Wilde library!
I have to agree with all the 5 star reviews, there is not much else I can say, I just want to add that the edition was flawless, and perfect.Quite lovely.

Enjoy De Profundis, well worth reading again!

A unique book
The best and the saddest book by Oscar Wilde. I hope that sooner or later my English gets good enough to be able to appreciate it in its original language.

Wilde's lowest moments
Written as a letter to Bosie, De Profundis shows an author at the peak of his powers, yet tragically already fallen.Anger, disgust, revulsion, joy, reflection - in many ways a total separation from the glib and cocky literature that made him famous - the full gamut of a humbled man.Even missing the cheeky humor and quick turn of phrase there is still a solid thread of consistency entombed in De Profundis, that of salvation.From the grace evident in his fairy tales to the recognition of inner justice in Dorian Gray, Wilde flirted with the themes of the Divine and of sacrifice.This is one of the finest, and most powerful, personal essays ever committed to paper.No collection, or indeed beginnings of understanding, of Wilde can possibly be complete without it. ... Read more

Product Description

An entirely new kind of biography, Built of Books explores the mind and personality of Oscar Wilde through his taste in books

This intimate account of Oscar Wilde's life and writings is richer, livelier, and more personal than any book available about the brilliant writer, revealing a man who built himself out of books. His library was his reality, the source of so much that was vital to his life. A reader first, his readerly encounters, out of all of life's pursuits, are seen to be as significant as his most important relationships with friends, family, or lovers. Wilde's library, which Thomas Wright spent twenty years reading, provides the intellectual (and emotional) climate at the core of this deeply engaging portrait.

One of the book's happiest surprises is the story of the author's adventure reading Wilde's library. Reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges's fictional hero who enters Cervantes's mind by saturating himself in the culture of sixteenth-century Spain, Wright employs Wilde as his own Virgilian guide to world literature. We come to understand how reading can be an extremely sensual experience, producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight.

Customer Reviews (6)

Oscar's tragic life
When still in school Thomas Wright resolved to read all the books Oscar Wilde had read, and although he admits at the end of this book that he didn't succeed, he did read enough of them to write this fascinating account of Oscar Wilde's life through Wilde's abiding passion, books.

Wright's book opens with the tragic sale of Wilde's library to pay his debts following his imprisonment in 1895 and then moves on to give an account of his upbringing in Dublin with the Celtic folk tales his mother loved. In Dublin's Trinity College Wilde met his mentor in Greek studies, Professor Mahaffy, and in Trinity and Oxford's Magdalen College, Wilde expanded his reading into the classics of the Latin and Greek civilizations, such as Livy, Euripides and Homer. From there Wright takes us through Wilde settling in London, his marriage in 1883, home life, and fine library in Tite Street, laid out and decorated to Wilde's exacting aesthetic requirements.

In 1891 Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas and their mutual searches for rentboys on the streets near London's House of Commons began.Their relationship revolted Bosie's father, the volatile and unstable Lord Queensbury, and when Queensbury publicly accused Wilde of sodomy Wilde, at Bosie's prompting, prosecuted Queensbury for criminal libel.It was a fatal mistake.Queensbury's counsel, Wilde's fellow Dubliner and future leader of Ulster Unionism, Edward Carson, cleverly trapped Wilde in his own eloquence and allowed him incriminate himself.Not only did Wilde's prosecution collapse but Wilde found himself being prosecuted for his homosexuality.He was convicted and Wright recounts Wilde's terrible imprisonment and concludes his story with Wilde's final years, the collapse of his creative drive and lonely death in Paris surrounded by his last few hundred books, including works by Balzac, Huysmans, and Flaubert's 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony.'

The story is entertainingly told through the books Wilde was reading and writing about, from his favourites, such as Pater's `Studies in the History of the Renaissance', to the books he scornfully derided such as the now forgotten Harry Quilter's `Sententiae Artis' a book of bourgeois art criticism.Wright includes in his tale interesting accounts of Wilde's library, reading habits - Wilde's was a prodigious intelligence and his ability to read in Latin, Greek and numerous European languages impresses no less than his ability to read a book in detail in a matter of minutes - book designs, favourite book shops and numerous other details of his bookish life which will rivet the attention of any bibliophile and give him many hours of entertaining reading and many ideas for further reading.

There's little to criticize in this book but at times the author's obvious enthusiasm gets the better of him and he offers conjectures on Wilde's life with little basis in fact, even going so far as to speculate, incredibly, that Wilde may have intended his downfall as a form of Greek tragedy.

In addition to Wright's own easy writing style, the book is laced with great lines from Wilde himself.What reader who has waded through the sickly sentimentality of Dickens will not erupt in laughter when he reads Wilde's comment `One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.' And, appropriately, the best line in the book is Wilde's, when he said, in reference to the Bible `When I think of all the harm that book has done, I despair of ever writing anything equal to it.'

Good idea, bad execution
There are so many biographies of Oscar Wilde, I appreciate the unique angle that Wright brings to the table with `Built of Books'.Unfortunately, he doesn't pull it off.

This book is in the form of a number of episodic chapters, so there's no real flow except towards the end, somewhere around the point Wilde is arrested in 1895.Indeed, these could in fact be a series of essays because Wright repeats a few anecdotes, which further enhance the disconnectedness of the whole.Though I didn't see any indication on the book that these were meant to be essays.He also speculates a lot, something I don't like to see very much in a biography.It's as if he were trying to fill some space to make this a book-length work.

There are many interesting tidbits about Wilde in this book.How could there not be with a subject so interesting?As the author points out A NUMBER OF TIMES, Wilde's life imitated art in many respects.But the majority of this book is simply boring, especially the first 2/3.It seemed to be nothing more than a litany of stories his mother read to him as a child and books he gave to friends.Wright spends much time going over all the different inscriptions Wilde wrote into books he gave his friends.A few examples would have been enough.About 100 pages would have been enough for this entire book.

A New Kind of Biography
Wright, Thomas. "Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde", Henry Holt and Company, 2009.

A New Kind of Biography

Amos Lassen

There have been many biographies of Oscar Wilde but here is one based upon what the Irishman read. Wilde was a serious reader and it seems like he enjoyed reading just about anything from the intellectual to the pornographic. Wilde loved books with beautiful bindings and he often sent them to young men as gifts. He would also tear off and eat the top of a page when he read it (similar to a college professor of mine who felt that once a page had been read there was no need to keep it so he tore it out and on his bookshelves were just the spines of the books he had read).
After all Wilde spent time in prison and he had little more to do than to read. One wonders id the reason he wrote so brilliantly was because he read so much. While Wilde appeared to be a modern man (Because of his homosexuality), he was not like a modern man in terms of his reading habits. He had a classical education and read the classics and if art imitates life as we see in his work than he indeed was an intellectual. He came to life by reading and we are so lucky to have had him.

For the Love of Life & Books
I've had an opportunity to view many pieces on favorite authors, events, and places. I like to go beyond the staid coverage of the topic in question, to the individual pieces: influences, inserts, and inputs that make the person, play or place function and flourish. General biographies are fine as a start, especially when they also describe the environment that the subject operates but they are few and far between. Even less available (while acceptable or even understandable) are the books that explain the person through the prism of their parts: interests, influences, and passions. Built of Books is one such document that allow us to gain some understanding of Oscar Wilde, through his love of books. While the author does use terms such as "perhaps," and "may be," etc., his piecing of the Wilde puzzle is like a story being told, allowing for each of us, as the listeners to come to our own conclusions about Mr. Wilde and his life, and just as importantly, the importance of books, in developing our own passions in life. For me personally, this book made me review (and even order)other documents on Oscar Wilde, as well as other materials on the passion of books. This is just another example of a book reaffirming my love of books (with an additional interest in Wilde and other favorite authors of mine and their influences). Thank you, Thomas Wright, for a thoroughly enjoyable "story" of one of our greatest storytellers - Obviously, I recommend the book highly!

A pick for both general-interest and literary libraries
BUILT OF BOOKS: HOW READING DEFINED THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE provides an excellent account of the writer's life, times and inspirations, providing a focus on the library which was the source of many of his works. He was a reader, and his literary encounters built a collection twenty years in the making. This survey of his collection offers vivid insights into Wilde and book collectors in general and is a pick for both general-interest and literary libraries.
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Product Description
Oscar Wilde was already one of the best-known literaryfigures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn hisextraordinary talents to the theatre. Between 1891 and1895 he produced a sequence of distinctive plays whichspearheaded the dramatic renaissance of the 1890s andretain their power today.This collection offers newlyedited texts of Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of NoImportance, Salome, An Ideal Husband, and, arguably thegreatest farcical comedy in English, The Importance ofBeing Earnest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Classic entertainment
The plays of Oscar Wilde sum up, even moreso than The Picture of Dorian Gray, all his flaws and talents and his propensity for playing the role of Oscar Wilde. If you're new to his world, I can't recommend a better introduction than the Oxford World's Classics edition of five of his most important plays.

"Lady Windermere's Fan" is an engaging start, high quality (excepting some rather awkward soliloquies), artificial and with a complex antagonist in Mrs. Erlynne. Lady Windermere evolves as a character, the pacing is well set and everyone walks away with one illusion...except Mrs. Erlynne. It walks the line between comedy and drama, and serves as a most enjoyable start.

"Salome" is atypical of the set, an aethetic work of art for art's sake. It's a heavy drama in one act, with overwrought, yet strangely believable phrases. I had to play "spot John the Baptist" for a while, not realizing that he was referred to as Iokanaan. It's a mood piece, weaving a fabulous spell, full of rapturous descriptions of jewels and wealth, dark imagery and a fantastically macabre climax.

"A Woman of No Importance" is the worst of the set. Dandy as VILLIAN was a bit strained, but alright. The real problems came from A: recycling witticisms. Some of the best lines in this play were also copied verbatim in The Picture of Dorian Gray, completely jarring me out of the story. B: the melodrama. Standards of melodrama are utilized shamelessly; the finale is a great mess of characters weeping at each others feet, lots of "I am not worthy of this and thats" abound, and I didn't care one jot about anyone. C: Hester, our heroine, was nauseatingly Puritanical. Unlike Lasy Windermere and Lady Chiltern, she never evolves, never learns to see the shades of gray in sin and morality.

"An Ideal Husband" is easily my favorite. A ripping good yarn, full of hero (or husband) worship, blackmail, a Wodehouseian butler, a perfect pace, and the marvelously endearing dandy Lord Goring. Most of the dandies Wilde created wind up rather unappealing in the long run, so meeting a complete charmer was a treat. It also manages to be romantic, albeit frivolously so, and is a perfect blend of comedy and drama.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" really didn't do it for me. Highly ridiculous, with completely unbelievable characters and dialogue. His most artificial work (and coming from Oscar, that is saying something!) It was alright, of course, but the dramatic edge was removed and all the scuffles over food look far better on stage or screen.

Despite the flaws in all these plays, and in pretty much anything Oscar Wilde set his name to, reading this set was so heartily enjoyable that it caused me to pick up The Complete Oscar Wilde. The Oxford World's Classics contains expansive notes, always readable, if not always terribly relevant. A good edition that I fully recommend.

very much worth reading

I've seen most of these as film adaptations before, but the plays themselves are quite
an entertaining read.Sometimes these read just like a vehicle for Wilde's aphorisms,
but even then they are very entertaining.

Highly Recommend
Sorry for late response.Delivery and state of product was perfect - thank you!

Kind regards,
Melissa ... Read more

Product Description
Wilde on Sincerity:"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."Nearly a century after his death, the wit of Oscar Wilde remains as fresh and barbed as ever.This collection of his works, letters, reviews, anecdotes and repartee is ample proof ofthis iconoclast's enduring place in the world of arts and letters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Most Quotable Of Writers (Shakespeare Excluded)
This compendium of quotes from Oscar Wilde is arranged by subject matter alphabetically and provides a great deal of entertainment for $7 bucks. Not to mention it is the ultimate source for witty quotations to make you the life of the party. Seriously, a great book to page through at random for some laughs and thought provoking witticisms from the most quotable modern author.

"Between Me and Life There is A Mist of Words Always"
Oscar Wilde once said "Drama is the meeting place of art and life." In this essential, compact volume Ralph Keyes leaves a trail to that corner by gathering the flamboyant author's thorniest, at times most insightful quotes and anecdotes. Keyes uses Wilde's plays, reviews, letters, interrogations, even conversational repartee (given its own section) which remained Wilde's signature to his time.

Keyes divides Wilde's epigrams and puns into brief, easily readable sections. Wilde twists traditional views on permanent truths and those of his day: altruism ("Charity creates a multitude of sins.") history ("History is merely gossip.") theology,poverty, dissent ("Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.")

Above all, Wilde (through Keyes' selections) quips and dissects each of the fine arts (music, prose, painting) and roles for creator, viewer, interpreter.He addresses the writer ("Even prophets correct their proofs.")critic ("Criticism is the highest form of autobiography"), andartist ("Like the Greek gods, artists are known only to each other.")

Amid his fast-paced one liners on male-female relations you sense how Wilde viewed marriage over and above his well-known bromide, "Divorces are made in heaven." The book ends with Wilde explaining and defending the homosexual relationship he called "the love that dare not speak its name". Whether or not you accept Wilde's lifestyle preferences, his eloquent, sad defense of a letter he wrote a younger man is moving as he describes the unique merge of intellect and youthful energy which to him formed "the noblest sort of affection." It is as close to heartfelt as anyone could get who once said,"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

Oscar Wilde was parodied, villified, and eventually imprisoned for his beliefs and flamboyance. But he eventually influenced artists from George Bernard Shaw to John Lennon, staking a claim as the earliest example of a postmodern artist. This book helps introduce Wilde's full books and plays (Keyes references them consistently and provides a full bibliography), or helps you reference witty, intellectual (or psuedo-intellectual, as Wilde might have preferred) quotes for any occassion. (As to plagarizing, Wilde himself called it, "the privilege of the appreciative man.") His full literary courses are nutritious and filling enough, but "The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde" is as savory when reading or writing as salt is when dining. ... Read more

Product Description
Oscar Wilde's dramatic private life has sometimesthreatened to overshadow his great literaryachievements. His talent was prodigious: the author ofbrilliant social comedies, fairy stories, criticaldialogues, poems, and a novel, The Picture of DorianGray.In addition to Dorian Gray, this volume represents allthese genres, including such works as Lady Windermere'sFan and The Importance of Being Earnest, 'The HappyPrince', 'The Critic as Artist',and 'The Ballad ofReading Gaol'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good service
I needed the Wilde book for a class. It was easy to find the exact book I needed and to buy it and have it shipped on time. It arrived in excellent condition. Thanks. ... Read more

Product Description
Lord Alfred Douglas’ translation of Wilde’s great play (originally written in French), with all well-known Beardsley illustrations, including suppressed plates. The best edition. 28 Beardsley illustrations; introduction by Robert Ross.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

About the Heritage Press Edition
Decadent, sexual, Byzantine, and finely-made.

This is a Salome of palpable quality. Bound in black cloth with a blind-stamped image of Salome surrounded by stars above John the Baptist's head. With matching slipcase.

Every page of text is laid out with golden-yellow and salmon rules surrounded by Persian arabesques. There are numerous incidental Valenti Angelo illustrations in black and white. His full page illustrations in black, white, blue, and salmon with real gilt.

And, incredibly, the gilt on the full-page illustrations is hand-applied.

Powerful
This play is based on the biblical story of the death of John the Baptist. Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Judea, is married to his brother's wife Herodias, but finds himself lusting after her daughter Salome. Overcome with wine and passion for Salome, he offers her anything to dance the dance of seven veils for him. Little does he know what price she will exact.

Oscar Wilde first published this book in Paris in 1891 in an attempt to bypass Victorian censorship. In 1894 it was translated into English, and published with a series of illustrations created by the incomparable Aubrey Beardsley. This book was quite shocking to Victorian Britain.

This book surprised me with its power. While not erotic in the modern, XXX sense, it is a compelling tale of decadence. The characters give no thought to anything but their own pleasure, and the worst of them all is the young (and far from innocent) Salome. Beardsley's stark, black-and-white pictures add to the tale, complementing Wilde's text with a disturbing, passionless sexuality. This is a fascinating story, and one that I recommend to any adult.

a fascinating story
Salome by Oscar Wilde with Illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley

The Kindle edition of Salome contains Aubrey Beardsley illustrations. A brilliant tale of passion; a very quick and interesting read.

Info
Salome: A Tragedy in One Act
Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas.
With a new introduction by Holbrook Jackson.
Beautifully decorated and hand-illuminated by Valenti Angelo for the Heritage Press, New York.
51 pages.
Copyright 1945.
Hardback book comes in slipcover.

Excellent play with beautiful illustrations
I bought this book for a class, but while I sold most of them back this beauty I kept.The play itself is obscure.Since it was written in (rather poor) French originally and translated back into English, it lacks some of Oscar Wilde's trademark style.This is not to say that the style of the play is without its own merits.As the book is the retelling of a Biblical story- that of Salome, daughter of King Herod, and John the Baptist (Iokanaan in this rendition)- the style of the play often mocks Biblical style.The wording is thus often repetitive and simple, but there's a beauty to it that is in many ways indescrible.While wordy, there is also a particular depth to it that you'll miss if you don't look carefully.Thematically, the play was very entertaining and I enjoyed the revisionist take on the Biblical story.Overall I found this work enthralling.This particular edition is beautiful- it includes all of Aubre Beardsley's stunning ink illustrations of the play. This is well worth having on your bookshelf (although it is rather large- 8x11) ... Read more

Product Description
In three short months, Oscar Wilde, the most celebrated playwright and wit of Victorian England, was toppled from the apex of British society into humiliation and ruin. Drawing from trial documents, newspaper accounts, and writings of the key players, Moisés Kaufman ignites an incendiary mix of sex and censorship, with a cast of characters ranging from George Bernard Shaw to Queen Victoria herself.

A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: JB Blanc, Dakin Matthews, Ian Ogilvy, Peter Paige, Julian Sands, Simon Templeman, John Vickery, Douglas Weston, Matthew Wolf ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Wonderfully Wilde
Wow! I recently reread Gross Indecency and was struck by its seemingly effortless structure and profundity. Kaufman did a masterful job of using the Wildean archives to construct a compelling and still-timely portrait of an artist under fire. Wilde is such a tragic figure, and his story says so much not only about Victorian mores but about our own. Sadly, things haven't changed much: the self-described moral arbiters of today--the Palins, Bachmans, and Angles of the world--are just as daft and pathetic as they were then. In some strange way, I find that comforting. Just a beautiful and sublime work.

Moises Kaufman will be a great name in theater history
I have been lucky enough to share the initiation of Mr. Kaufman career in theater in Venezuela, have seen Gross Indecency both in New York and London several times, and have read the play, which is masterfully built. This is a unique experience, both read and seen, and believe me, Mr. Kaufman will be remembered in the future as one of the great names of theater of our time. This may sound as an exaggeration, but if you are someone who is looking for trends in theater, great acting, the influence of Brecht in new generations, never forget this author and director.

This play completely opened my eyes....
i decided to read gross indecency after seeing something about it on tv. being a big fan of oscar wilde's work, i thought that it would be informative. but it went so far beyond that...the play is a little hard to get into at first, and if you're not a fan of oscar wilde, i really wouldn't recommend reading it. you can really see the oscar's transformation during the course of the three trials, from an independent artist with his own views on morality who refuses to be ashamed about his sexuality, to someone who has seen the people he was friends with testify against him over and over....i don't know how anyone could survive in such a situation..... anyway, this play gave me a whole new knowledge of the life of oscar wilde and a new respect for him, the choices that he made, and the courage that he had. if you are really interested in the life of oscar wilde, read this.

A play worth reading, but only once...
This play seems to be true to Oscar Wilde's real biographical story in terms of its dialogues, but I did not enjoy reading it much. At first, I thought to myself: "Well, it is a PLAY, after all, may be it will seem better on a theater stage, where it belongs". So, I went to see threedifferent versions in three different theaters. I am sorry to say, but Idid not feel much better about this play after doing that. Well...if youare REALLY INTERESTED IN OSCAR WILDE, you might as well read it, but if youare only mildly interested, then this play is not for you.

Sexual witchunts still common today
Gross Indecency did a fine job of revealing the puritanical injustices commited by the court of Victorian England. It gives insight into the public sentiment and attitude towards class distinction and sexuality inthe late 19th century. What makes Gross Indecency work is that much of theintolerance of Wilde's time still exsists to this day. Much of the contentof "Gross Indecency" has yet to be learned. ... Read more