The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings [Paperback]

Oscar Wilde’s infamous wit, taste for scandal, and gift for revealing the hypocrisies of fashionable society are on display here in this collection of his finest plays. A genius both of and ahead of his time, he built his craft on the eternal questions of right and wrong—with pithy dialogue as fresh today as when it was written.

In addition to Wilde’s five major plays, this Signet Classics edition contains:

• Two interviews with the playwright at the peak of his career, in which Wilde discusses his work—and his critics

• Some of his most brilliant critical writing, in which he discusses the nature of art in terms that anticipate much of today’s literary theory

• An appendix that restores valuable lines that appeared in the original text ofThe Importance of Being Earnest

With an Introduction by Sylvan Barnet

and a New Afterword by Marylu Hill

Oscar Wildewas born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854. He was an outstanding student of classics at Trinity College, and, in 1874, entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize with his poem “Ravenna” (1878). An early leader of the “Aesthetic Movement,” which advanced the concept of “Art for Art’s Sake,” Wilde became a prominent personality in literary and social circles. His volume of fairy tales,The Happy Prince and Other Tales(1888) was followed byThe Picture of Dorian Gray(1891) andThe House of Pomegranates(1892). However, it was not until his playLady Windermere’s Fan(1892) was presented to the public that he became widely famous.A Woman of No Importance(1893) andThe Importance of Being Earnest(1895) confirmed his stature as a dramatist. In 1895 he brought libel action against the Marquis of Queensbury; revelations at the trial about his relationships led to his being sentenced under the Criminall“2