Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He graduated from Oxford University in 1878 with a reputation as a brilliant scholar and quickly dazzled London society with his wit and his flamboyant dress. His first literary successes came in the 1880s with his lecture tour of America and the publication of his fairy tales. These were followed by five highly polished plays and
, all completed during the first half of the 1890s. After losing a slander suit over accusations of his homosexual behavior, Wilde was prosecuted and spent two years in prison. Following his release in 1897, estranged from his wife and children, Wilde moved to Paris, where he died in 1900.

An extraordinary volume for fans and students
Including The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere's Fan , and Salomé , this collection showcases Wilde's brilliance and timeless wit.

1911. Wilde, Irish poet and dramatist whose reputation rests on his comic masterpieces Lady Wintermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. De Profundis was written from Wilde's prison cell at Reading Gaol to his friend and lover Lord Alfred Douglas. It explodes the conventions of the traditional love letter and offers a scathing indictment of Douglas's behavior, a mournful elegy for Wilde's own lost greatness, and an impassioned plea for reconciliation. At once a bracingly honest account of ruinous attachment and a profound meditation on human suffering. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

"The Wicked Wit of Oscar Wilde" is a celebration of the author's finest witticisms, aphorisms, paradoxes and ironical remarks. It features hundreds of acerbic and razor-sharp quotations from the iconic Victorian Aesthete and rebel and is beautifully decorated with black-and-white illustrations including those by Wilde's contemporary and friend, Aubrey Beardsley - the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era. It is an accessible and elegantly organized collection, with quotes gathered according to themes, perfect to dip into on the reader's whim. "The Wicked Wit of Oscar Wilde" brings before the reader the virtuoso of a well-turned phrase and the master of the studied insult; indeed, so perfect were Wilde's verbal thrusts that his victims were often flattered to have been the cause of them. His aphorisms and paradoxes, ironical remarks and needle-sharp rejoinders were repeated with delight - not least by Wilde himself, who took an artist's pride in his work. Yet for all that, his shafts were rarely cruel, for behind them lay great warmth of character, generosity of spirit, and a profound understanding of human life and human vanities. "The Wicked Wit of Oscar Wilde" shows us why, more than a hundred years after his death, people of every age and from all walks of life are still drawn to Wilde's dazzling repartee and the wicked brilliance of his social observations, while his plays and stories continue to entertain and enthral succeeding generations.

'The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.' When Dorian Gray has his portrait painted, he is captivated by his own beauty. Tempted by his world-weary, decadent friend Lord Henry Wotton, he wishes to stay forever young, and pledges his very soul to keep his good looks. Set in fin-de-siecle London, the novel traces a path from the studio of painter Basil Hallward to the opium dens of the East End. As Dorian's slide into crime and cruelty progresses he stays magically youthful, while his beautiful portrait changes, revealing the hideous corruption of moral decay. Ever since its first publication in 1890 Wilde's only novel has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. Combining elements of the supernatural, aestheticism, and the Gothic, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an unclassifiable and uniquely unsettling work of fiction. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This Victorian comedy of manners sparkles with Wilde’s trademark repartee, epigrams, and witty dialogue. Arch-moralist Lady Windermere, shattered by the suspicion of her husband’s infidelity, contemplates running off with a roué until her rival illustrates the difference between morality and its appearance. A comic masterpiece, studded with humorous quips and clever paradoxes.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.' Including some of Oscar Wilde's most well-known and infamous plays, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, this collection of the infamous writer's works displays his brilliant, quick wit to its full glory. Wilde's pithy social comedies dissect the morals and idiosyncrasies of society in the 1890s and offer a view of the sexual politics of the time.

Outraged by the sexual perversity of this one-act tragedy, Great Britain's Lord Chamberlain banned
from the national stage. Symbolist poets and writers — Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck among them — defended the play's literary brilliance. Beyond its notoriety, the drama's haunting poetic imagery, biblical cadences, and febrile atmosphere have earned it a reputation as a masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement of
England.
Written originally in French in 1892, this sinister tale of a woman scorned and her vengeance was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. The play inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and an abridged version served as the text for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition, published in 1894, and also includes "A Note on Salomé" by Robert Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor. Students, lovers of literature and drama, and admirers of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable literary gifts will rejoice in this inexpensive edition.

To commemorate the centenary of the first performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation on 13 February 1995; directed by Glyn Dearman, it featured Dame Judi Dench as "Lady Bracknell", Sir Michael Hordern as "Lane", Michael Sheen as "Jack Worthing", Martin Clunes as "Algernon Moncrieff", John Moffatt as "Rev. Canon Chasuble", Miriam Margolyes as "Miss Prism", Samantha Bond as "Gwendolen" and Amanda Root as "Cecily".

Playwright, poet, essayist, flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde pack an astonishing amount of work, genius, and controversy into two short decades, producing masterworks in every literary genre. This selection includes almost all of his short stories, including "The Canterville Ghost," "The Fisherman and his Soul," and "The Remarkable Rocket." Alongside THE MODEL MILLIONAIRE, Harper Perennial will publish the short fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, Leo Tolstoy, and Stephen Crane to be packaged in a beautifully designed, boldly colorful boxset in the aim to attract contemporary fans of short fiction to these revered masters of the form. Also, in each of these selections will appear a story from one of the new collections being published in the "Summer of the Short Story." A story from Simon Van Booy's forthcoming collection, LOVE BEGINS IN WINTER, will be printed at the back of this volume.

This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Wilde's poetry and prose short stories, plays, critical dialogues and his only novel - to give the essence of his work and thinking. Oscar Wilde's dramatic private life has sometimes threatened to overshadow his great literary achievements. His talent was prodigious: the author of brilliant social comedies, fairy stories, critical dialogues, poems, and a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In addition to Dorian Gray, this volume represents all these genres, including such works as Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest, 'The Happy Prince', 'The Critic as Artist', and 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Importance of Being Earnest shows a full measure of Oscar Wilde's legendary wit, and embodies more than any of his other plays, his decency and warmth. This edition contains substantial excerpts from the original four-act version which was never produed, as well as the full test of the final three-act version, selections from Wilde's correspondence, and commentary by George Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm, St. John Hankin, and James Agate.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Stories) is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket".
A House of Pomegranates is a collection of fairy tales, written by Oscar Wilde, that was published in 1891 as a second collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Wilde once said that this collection was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public.

De Profundis does not resemble any of the other works that made Wilde famous; and it's a work that often seems to make critics uncomfortable. Perhaps justly so: in the end it's a response to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality. In our modern context, that makes the work easy to look away from -- but it also speaks to things that concern and disturb many people, even today.