Grade 2-5-A statue of a privileged prince develops a social conscience and a swallow intends to pause just a moment to assist him. Together they conspire to bring a modicum of contentment, financial security, and compassion to the beleaguered poor of a nameless city in northern Europe and both receive their rewards in a heavenly paradise. In this morality tale originally intended for the childlike rather than the child, Wilde addresses issues of social injustice, the loss of innocence, and the redemptive power of love. The otherwise verbatim retelling of the original contains two omissions: reference to Jewish merchants in the ghetto and part of a descriptive passage of life on the Nile that included pygmies and strange religious practices. The watercolor illustrations, varying in size and irregular in shape, are literal extensions of the text. A brief biography of Wilde is appended. Though the winsome swallow and wistful prince have appeal, buy only where literary fairy tales have a ready audience. A more evocative interpretation can be found in Ed Young's version (S & S, 1992).
Carol Ann Wilson, Westfield Memorial Library, NJ
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'The Puffin Classics series is a perfect marriage of the old and the new. Enjoy some of the best books from the past and find out why and how they inspired some of the best writers of the present. - Julia Ecclesshare, Lovereading4kids' - Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4kids

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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) has perhaps attracted more critical and biographical attention in recent years than any other writer of the late-nineteenth century. Renowned for his skills in shocking a prurient bourgeoisie, he first built his career as a raconteur and stylish public speaker. This boxed set reprints the 1908 collected works together with the first trade edition of The Picture of Dorian Grey . Also included is Stuart Mason's comprehensive Bibliography of Oscar Wilde , which remains an indispensable research tool. 注：两种封面，随机发货。

On 13 December 2000, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new radio adaptation directed by Howard Davies starring Geraldine McEwan as "Lady Bracknell", Simon Russell Beale as "Jack Worthing", Julian Wadham as "Algernon Moncrieff", Geoffrey Palmer as "Rev. Canon Chasuble", Celia Imrie as "Miss Prism", Victoria Hamilton as "Gwendolen" and Emma Fielding as "Cecily", with music composed by Dominic Muldowney.

The text of this Norton Critical Edition of The Importance of Being Earnest is the established three-act version. Originally in four acts, Wilde shortened it to three at the urging of George Alexander, the owner of the St. James Theatre and first actor to play Jack Worthing. The play is accompanied by explanatory annotations and by an appendix of excised portions.
"Backgrounds" includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Joseph Donohue, Regenia Gagnier, and Karl Beckson.
"Reviews and Reactions" collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, among them George Bernard Shaw's famous dissenting view and the American assessment by H. F. "Essays in Criticism" includes six diverse assessments of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Camille Paglia, Christopher Craft, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Peter Raby, and Richard Haslam.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
About the Series : No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions . Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

Oscar Wilde's brilliant play makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and dazzling humour. It is 1890's England and two young gentlemen are being somewhat limited with the truth. To inject some excitement into their lives, Mr Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, as an excuse to leave his dull country life behind him to pursue the object of his desire, the ravishing Gwendolyn. While across town Algernon Montecrieff decides to take the name Earnest, when visiting Worthing's young ward Cecily. The real fun and confusion begins when the two end up together and their deceptions are in danger of being revealed.

This is Oscar Wilde's tale of the American family moved into a British mansion, Canterville Chase, much to the annoyance its tired ghost. The family -- which refuses to believe in him -- is in Wilde's way a commentary on the British nobility of the day -- and on the Americans, too. The tale, like many of Wilde's, is rich with allusion, but ends as sentimental romance. . . .

Oscar Wilde was a major celebrity in the late Victorian era. He was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer. His works are known for their caustic wit. Wilde spent two years in a hard labor prison after being convicted of gross indecency. The Canterville Ghost is a novella parody featuring an ambassador and a spirit. The ambassador moves his family into a castle, which is known to be haunted.

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.

More than 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in a paperback edition. This volume restores all of the material removed by the novel's first editor. Upon receipt of the typescript, Wilde's editor panicked at what he saw. Contained within its pages was material he feared readers would find "offensive"--especially instances of graphic homosexual content. He proceeded to go through the typescript with his pencil, cleaning it up until he made it "acceptable to the most fastidious taste." Wilde did not see these changes until his novel appeared in print. Wilde's editor's concern was well placed. Even in its redacted form, the novel caused public outcry. The British press condemned it as "vulgar," "unclean," "poisonous," "discreditable," and "a sham." When Wilde later enlarged the novel for publication in book form, he responded to his critics by further toning down its "immoral" elements. Wilde famously said that The Picture of Dorian Gray "contains much of me": Basil Hallward is "what I think I am," Lord Henry "what the world thinks me," and "Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps." Wilde's comment suggests a backward glance to a Greek or Dorian Age, but also a forward-looking view to a more permissive time than his own repressive Victorian era. By implication, Wilde would have preferred we read today the uncensored version of his novel.

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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.

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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...

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

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.

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.

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

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...

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.