Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Thin book, fat wits!
This sweet little book is full of Oscar Wilde's great little quips. I absolutely love it! I keep it next to my desk and pick it up for those sweet little chuckle breaks that we all must take to break up the dreary work day!Great little read! Promise!

Unparalleled Wit & Wisdom
"I can resist everything except temptation."
"There is no sin except stupidity."
"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."
"It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done."

These laconic aphorisms are just the tip of the iceberg of Wilde's impressive, yet oftentimes eclectic and nihilistic, use of the English language.Dover gives us 60 pages of brilliant witticisms and axioms to use over and over again for a mere dollar.You can't go wrong.Also recommended - Dover's Shakespeare quotes book for a dollar.Enjoy.

Thin small and funny
Everyone knows OW was a witty guy.

If you want to find witty things he said in one small book such that you can try to emulate his wit, this book is for you.

It's good for an hour's read where you will snicker, snort, and grin.

It's exactly what i expected and exactly what I got.Whee!

Oscar Wilde is a Genius
This collection of Wilde's greatest quotes is an easy read, and wonderful to keep around the house.Wilde's wisdom is displayed throughout this edition, and is a must have for any Wilde fan. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
In addition to writing numerous poems, plays and his famous novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, he wrote his fairy-tale collections, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1892). These two collections are included in this volume and are accompanied by colorful illustrations by Reinhard Gieselmann. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The first fairy tales I heard
My father read them to me, when I was 4, sitting in the crook of his arm (I know I was 4, because at five, I was too BIG to sit in the crook of his arm, and besides, I could read). He must have read them to me a lot, because I still remember "the cold gray fingers of dawn were clutching at the fading stars," from "The Young King" (my favorite, then), and--in "The Selfish Giant," the words TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED were capitalized, and when he got to them, he'd make me "read" them aloud.
It is thus hard for me to say they aren't children's stories. Some children's stories are frightening; why shouldn't some be sad?

They are lovely, often very sad (though some end happily), socially conscious (Wilde seems to have had a strong sense of being surrounded by the poor --well, London is not a bad place to find them), and often filled with irony--but the kind children can understand. Some make reference to God, and one to Christ, indirectly (though the clergy aren't always so sharp!). Some take us on journeys to strange and foreign places. Some have a rather sophisticated sense of humor (I understood these well enough as a child, but did not like them very much).

It's nice to have them again, in a large-paged (and such white pages!), hardbacked
book. I find the intentionally primitive, brightly-colored illustrations hard to get used to. I expected something more realistic, or even pre-Raphaelite or Art Nouveau. Perhaps others will appreciate them. ... Read more

Amazon.com
She was lovely, sophisticated, and famous for her witty conversation,even in a social circle that was known for its fabulous talkers. The only childofOscar Wilde'sdissipated older brother Willie, Dolly Wilde (1895-1941) led a life asscandalous and glittering as her uncle's: she, too, loved her own sex, and herlongest romantic relationship was with American heiress Natalie Clifford Barney,who was host of the most important Parisian literary salon of the 20th century.Unfortunately for Dolly's posthumous reputation, she "was an artist of thespoken word" whose only written legacy was her marvelous correspondence. Quotingliberally and perceptively from those letters, American playwright Joan Schenkarbrings Wilde to life in a modernist biography that is written in prose assparkling as Dolly's fabled bons mots. Schenkar eschews conventionalchronology to consider Wilde's life thematically, from her lesbianism to hertaste for smart society to her self-destructive identification with Uncle Oscar.She reminds us just how remarkable and accomplished were the women at Barney'ssalon (journalistJanet Flanner,novelistDjuna Barnes, andartistMina Loy, among them)and how much they esteemed Dolly Wilde. Yet, her biographer downplays neitherWilde's addiction to drugs nor the sad loneliness of her death (possibly from adrug overdose) at age 45. This is essentially a tale of "squandered gifts andlost opportunities," Schenkar acknowledges, but she successfully provokesreaders to share her admiration for Wilde's prodigal generosity with both hertalent and her affections. --Wendy SmithBook Description
For sixty years she was a delicious rumor: Oscar Wilde's enchanting niece Dorothy.Born a scant three months after her uncle's notorious arrest and raised in the shadow of the greatest scandal of the turn of the 20th Century, Dorothy Ierne Wilde died exactly as she lived: vividly, rather violently, and at a very good address.

A "born writer" who never completed the creative life promised by her famous name and gorgeous imagination, Dolly Wilde was charged with charm, brilliantly witty, changeable as refracting light, and loaded with sexual allure.She made her career in the salonsand in the bedroomsof some of London's and Paris' most interesting women and men. Attracting people of taste and talent wherever she went, she drenched her prodigious talents in liquids and chemicals, burnt up her opportunities in flamboyant affairs, and created continuous sensations by the ways in which she seemed to be re-living the life of her infamous uncle.

In this revolutionary and very modern biography, Joan Schenkar provides a fascinating look at what it means to live with the talents but not the achievements of biography's usual subjects: those obliterating "winners"like Dolly's uncle Oscarwhose stories have almost erased riveting histories like Dolly's own.And she uncovers never-before-published evidence of the hidden life of the Wilde family and of the extraordinary salon society of Natalie Clifford Barney, Dolly Wilde's longest and most fatal attachment.

"At last, an in-depth portrait of the 'Beautiful Loser of the Wilde family,' a brilliant eccentric whom Janet Flanner rightly described as 'like a character out of a book.'Anyone interested in modernism, gender-bending and/or expatriate Paris will be enthralled by Joan Schenkar's penetrating and often poignant biography of a woman strangely charismatic and witty enough to be 'truly Wilde.'"Sandra M. Gilbert, co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic and No Man's Land

"Truly Wilde is a revelation, the great story of a life and of the creation of modern culture. Read this biography for its high drama, its hijinks, and, at the end, for its poignancy and horror." Catharine R. Stimpson, author and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University

"Joan Schenkar has lifted a veil to reveal a sophisticated, overheated lesbian world in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. At the center is Oscar Wilde's niece Dollyself-destructive, self-dramatizing, magnetic. This is a great story, beautifully told." Edmund White

"A touching portrait of a louche, lush and lascivious lady who makes today's alleged It Girls look like the vapid paper-dolls they areand a vivid picture of a time when, incredibly, the wealthy and titled were also witty and talented."Julie Burchill, columnist for The Guardian ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

meaning without words...a wisp of a shadow
How do you relate the life of someone who never stepped forward from the shadows of her disgraced uncle, Oscar Wilde? Someone who sparkled like a thousand shards of a broken mirror on a sunlit day?
Dolly was a wisp of a shadow, mesmerizing, bewitching permanently etching herself into onto one's memory with her mere presence. Those who knew her well, Janet Flanner, Natalie Barney, Honey Harris - true wordsmiths all- struggled to explain her enigmatic aura. Captivating, enchanting- adjectives repeated over and over in a vain attempt to eplain her effect on all she met.
Her magic was her brilliant conversation, her charming turn of phrase, the impermanence of flowing dialogue that she wouldn't or couldn't commit to paper. She lived and died in 'The Moment' nothing else mattered. Her flame burned bright and then was gone - a willing(?) or fated victim to excesses she could not (and would not) control and the ravages of a body aged long before its time. Suicide? accident? Murder? The myth and truth of 'Wilde' consumed her all the same.
This biography isn't linear because Dolly didn't live her life linearly. Her life was moments of sight and sound and fury that the author captures completely.
How do you truly explain the unexplainable? This book is at it's best a series of half glimpses, whispered hints, or even dim reflections in mirrors (Dolly hated mirrors)of someone so busy 'living in the moment' that after that glorious moment she was gone with only the faint trace of pleasure and grace.
And somehow all that works and works well, this book recreates her life so much more then a dry recording of droning facts could ever capture of such a glorious spirit. No such dullness For Dolly Wilde! I highly recommend this book.

Truly Milde
In the spirit of Schenkar's grasping at straws to add pages to her book, I'd like to provide a recipe of my own:
How to Bore and Infuriate a Reader
Take 1 very interesting character
Add vast amounts of filler and repetition
Lard with half-baked postmodern theory
Heap in generous amounts of self-satisfaction
Infer that you've egregiously taken advantage of Nathalie Barney's elderly and generous housekeeper
Stir it all up with bad prose.
Half-bake and serve forth to an unsuspecting audience.

A wildly brilliant biography
With "Truly Wilde," author Joan Schenkar has reinterpreted and redefined the possibilities of the biographical form. Her strategy in recreating the world of Parisian intellectual and artistic salons in which Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly flourished in the 1920s - most notably Natalie Barney's Academie des Femmes - is stunningly iconoclastic,deeply compelling, and brilliantly written. From a base of scrupulous and capacious research, from interviews with primary sources and access to original documents, illustrated with a fascinating array of photographs, Schenkar uses a thematic rather than chronological approach to bring Dolly Wilde and her world to life, and to follow with fierce attention the course of herdescent to a lonely death in London at the age of 45. Ms. Schenkar does not feel bound by academic niceties. Her book is rich in the odd detail - a palm reading, for instance, or a favorite recipe - that make that era and those brilliant characters as luminous as real life. In her hands, Dolly Wilde becomes a memorable and ultimately mysterious force of nature.

For The Intelligent Reader
There is nothing like pleasure to motivate a book review and I took an enormous pleasure in reading -- and then in instantly re-reading - TRULY WILDE. This book gives such a precise and poetic view of the seductive and fascinating Dolly Wilde and such a generously ducumented look at the period in which she flourished -- a period in which conversation was still an art and identity was something that could still be invented - that you really feel yourself feeling with and for Dolly. It's an exemplary, inventive biography. And the photographs are wonderful.

Truly Wilde assumes that its readers delight in language and ideas and bring to it a certain intelligence. I presume that this refreshing approach accounts for the stellar reviews on the book jacket by such brilliant writers as Jeannette Winterson and Edmund White; I presume that it also accounts for the few, suspiciously vitriolic comments found on this site - which seemto be motivated by something other than a desire to share an opinion.

I HIGHLYrecommend TRULY WILDE to all lovers of pleasure who like to think: this book, this life will reward you a thousand times over.

A disaster
This is without a doubt the worst book I have ever read. The author's cohorts seem to have agreed upon "experimental" as the operative descriptor for this abomination. In these tedious pages, however, "experimental" means only this: bad research, no facts, meandering/aimless prose, lack of direction, and disorganization. Oh, yes, how could I forget? It also means enormous amounts of filler at the end, including recipes and a handprint analysis-all, no doubt, in an attempt to meet contractual obligations to the publisher for a page count.

Don't take my word for it. Read the New York Times book review that appeared when this book was first published. It was written by a well-known lesbian feminist, and one would expect the reviewer to be sympathetic. Instead, she ripped this book to shreds. Deservedly so, in my opinion. ... Read more

Book Description

London's Central Criminal Court Sessions Papers for April 1895 were blunt, declaring that "the details of this case are unfit for publication." The case was Oscar Wilde's first trial, a libel action brought against the Marquess of Queensberry for publicly calling him a homosexual. What unfolded in the court was one of Victorian London's most infamous scandals: the great, doomed love affair between Wilde and Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, the Marquess's son. When it became public, it cost Wilde everything.

Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson and a noted researcher and archivist, has discovered the original transcript of the trial that led to his grandfather's tragedy. Here for the first time is the true, uncensored record, free of the distortions and censorship of previous accounts.

On 18 February 1895, Bosie's father delivered a note to the Albemarle Club addressed to "Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite [sic]." With Bosie's encouragement, Wilde decided to sue the Marquess for libel. As soon as the trial opened, London's literary darling was at the center of the greatest scandal of his time.

Wilde's fall from grace was swift: having lost this case, he was in turn prosecuted and later imprisoned. Bankrupted, he fled to Paris never to see his family again. Within five years he was dead, his health never having recovered from the years in Reading gaol.

This remarkable book reveals Wilde on trial for his life, though he did not know it -- his confidence ebbing under the relentless cross-questioning, the wit for which he was so celebrated gradually deserting him under the remorseless scrutiny. The tragic climax falls when Wilde is betrayed by his own cleverness, unconsciously playing into the prosecutor's hands. With that his cause is lost.

Customer Reviews (5)

YES, BOSIE INDEED IS THE VILLIAN IN ALL OF THIS
As this book makes abundantly clear, Alfred Douglas is to blame. Al wanted to get back at his unstable and angry father through Wilde. Alfred forced his lap dog Wilde to ignore everyone else's advice and pursue a criminal charge against his father the Marquess of Queensbury.

THe MArquess at that time had come through a vicious divorce trial, and suffered the suicide of an older son who was being blackmailed for intimate relations over many years with the new Prime Minister. The Marquess reacted unwisely in forbidding any friendship between Al and Oscar, and in moving not only to throw vegetables upon the stage on the opening night of The Importance, but also leaving a slanderous if somewhat illegible card at Oscar's club.

Oscar lived to regret that owing to his extravagance in setting up Al and Al's intimate pal in an expensive hotel, he could not pay the hotel bill and thus leave for a planned trip to Paris to practice Salome. Instead he remained in London and received the unfortunate card. His most trusted legal friend had already been retained by the Marquess and thus could not give Oscar the good advice he needed to ignore the card and discard it. Instead he followed Al's insistence in charging Al's father the Marquess, and the rest in the tight knit British aristocracy and ruling class, as flamboyantly revealed in Oscar's plays, was inexorable and inevitable. IN fact Oscar's trials become his finest performance and most indeniable proof of the utter and unmentionable corruption, vice, immorality and hypocrisy of the BRitish ruling class. But what a profound and absolute price he paid for revealing this.

This nevertheless was his life's mission. The son of Irish Catholic nationailsts, he was raised in Protestant Schools, including Trinity in Dublin where he was classmate to the one who would so cruelly cross-examine as recorded here. He then went on to Oxford, and London, serving subversively and amazing his fake friends. He perhaps believed he could dazzle the British courts but was quickly silenced, and the events must speak clearly for themselves. As for the British system of injustice, as BRitish Barrister and author of the Rumpole series John Mortimer displays in his brilliant foreword to this book, res ipse loquitur. Mortimer concludes: " . . .when any merciful prosecutor or Home Secretary might have decied that he had suffered enough, it let him down badly and he was finally convicted. Passing the ridiculous sentence of two years' hard labour, Mr. Justice WIlls said that men who could do as Oscar WIlde did were 'dead to all sense of shame.' This judge, who had presided over cases of rape and murder, seriously maintained that Wilde's offense was 'the worst I have ever tried.' When the verdict and sentence were announced ( . . .) the truth had been exposed but it was still a shameful day for British Justice (p. xiii)."

Needless to say that prosecutor who had so viciously treated Wilde despite their co-nationality went on to a highly successful legal career. Reading these transcripts reveal how gifted a barrister he was and how very poorly served was Mr. Wilde in this absolute diversion of the interests of justice, in which Wilde could bring a libel case against a member of the British aristocracy and wind up in prison himself, doing hard labour and losing everythnig he had including his beloved wife and sons.

This nevertheless stands as Mr. Wilde's greatest revelation of British corruption, which Anglo America now eagerly imitates, and thus which we must now read as a cautionary tale with great attention.

And we must deeply thank and congratulate Wilde's grandson in researching in a keenly academic manner this book from forgotten and hidden court documents and associated texts, and in writing the brilliant introduction and notes, a scholarly feat which he humbly denies and ascribes to others in his very generous acknowledgements.

Please note the Bitish edition of this book irrelevantly includes in the title Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess; do not buy needlessly twice unless a fervent collector of all things Wilde, which is emminently understandable and as matter of course forgiveable. Nevertheless, in light of Mr. Wilde's Irish nationalist parentage, and his central image in Salome, and in citing his own description of the Marquess of Queensberry this superfluous title makes itself sweet icing upon a bitter cake.

Life Was A Trial For Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde was a handsome man in 1892, as the photo of him in this books clearly indicates. He was a brilliant playwright and daubled in poetry. However, as the drawing of his arrest at the Cadogan Hotel on April 13, 1895, he was an arrogant, dandified "gentleman." He had been accused of a horrible charge and should have accepted his fate. To crave justice from libel, he laid himself and his reputation open to scrutiny and disaster.
Why his grandson would want all of this sordidness known now is impossible to comprehend. Some things are better left forgotten or not said. Wilde felt that the charge (however right it might be) called for a defense of justification. It turned out to be the opposite as the self-destructive genius only continued to lie with charm, entertaining the audience but not the court.

Those who start libel actions often emerge with their reputations and lives in tatters. Libel actions are meant to be cases for re-establishing reputations, confounding gossip and allowing the litigant to emerge in a state of unblemished purity (John Mortimer). The most famous libel case of all led Oscar Wilde directly to jail. He left behind a devoted wife and two sons. The grandson who released this detailed account of the trial to try to figure out "Why on earth did you do it?"

There are photographs of some of the persons involved and of the evidence used against him. It is proposed that perhaps he really didn't think he had done anything wrong. After all, many important people of that time got away with the same thing of which he was accussed. To learn what it is, you must read this book.

I'd heard rumors about his sexual persuasion previously, but this stuff went a little too far to please my sensibilities. The Judge maintained that men who could do as he did were 'dead to all sense of shame' and declared that this offence was 'the worst I have ever tried.'

Poor Oscar, his ego got in the way; his pride was too great to accept the fact that he had been 'found out.' In going to court, he laid open his past and destroyed his future. He hurt not only himself but his family as well. Why can't people just let the sordid past lay dormant?

A Book to Avoid
This is a wonderful book if you are only interested in reading the actual transcript from Oscar's trial. Indeed, the book is excellent in that respect. However, I would say it is a book to avoid if you are a fan of Lord Alfred Douglas. It seems to me that this book, like so many before it, is trying to make Alfred Douglas the scapegoat. There was a reason Bosie wanted Oscar to take his father to trial, they WOULD have won. It was a carefully laid out plan and Oscar, not Bosie, is the one who went astray from it. Lord Alfred was to take the witness box and testify against his father. When he was finished telling all that his father had done, what sort of man he was, they felt sure no jury would side with him. However, just before Bosie was about to take the witness box, Oscar refused to allow him. He knew what it would mean by his refusing to allow Bosie to take the stand, he understood very well what it would mean, but he said Bosie should never have to do such a thing. Lord Alfred himself spent a great deal of time lamenting Oscar's decision, and wondering why on earth he changed his mind. He seems to think that Oscar had been talking to Robert Ross and he and Ross had come up with another plan. Ross however, is a compulsive liar, and was probably the worst person Oscar could have trusted.

Oscar's sons, and his grandsons, lived with a false impression of Robert Ross, and therefore with a false impression of Lord Alfred Douglas. I am sickened that these misconceptions live on even now, so long after their deaths. I am sick of Lord Alfred being made out to be a monster, some evil, wicked boy who destroyed Oscar Wilde. Oscar was a very intelligent man, was he not? Don't you think he knew what he was doing? "I must say to myself that I ruined myself and that no man great or small can be ruined but by his own hand."-Oscar Wilde. I'm just tired of the blame being shoveled solely onto Lord Alfred. He wasn't a monster, and I wish people would stop trying to portray him as if he was one.

An amazing reading experience
What's amazing is that, we have heard for many years about the unparalleled wit and charm of Wilde in conversation, yet until now we of course have been denied this experience.Reading these verbatim transcripts, hundreds of pages long and recently unearthed, we are given the opportunity to do this almost virtually, for the Wildean voice comes through loud and clear, with perfect crispness and distinction.This libel trial, the first of three of the Oscar Wilde trials, is almost a conversation between two persons, and the defence counsel, Carson, though incredibly scornful and insolent, is almost as intelligent and quite as good at debate as Wilde, so it's a splendid match of brains.The outcome is disheartening, though, and throughout you can't help pounding the desk and murmuring out loud, oh, Oscar, how could you have been so stupid!Or -- don't go there!So he becomes real in a way he hasn't previously, not even in the best biographies available.Queensberry and Alfred Douglas come off, in hindsight, as monsters of privilege in only quasi-human form.And poor Edward Shelley, it is plain, deserves a book of his own.

A Genuine Tragedy
It wasn't a capital trial, but the 1895 libel proceedings of Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry were in their way tragic and terrible.Entering the trial, Wilde was a celebrity and a playwright with the magnificently silly _The Importance of Being Ernest_ in successful performance in London and New York.Afterwards, he was pursued, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at hard labor for the then crime of homosexuality.It is a story that has been told many times and turned into dramas.Those of us who love Wilde's writing and outrageous wit will always wonder what would have happened if he had been able to write and live as he wished, instead of being ruined and sent to an early death.Amazingly, the trial record has until now been unavailable.There were summaries, and publication of extracts, but only with _The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of the Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry)_, 1895 (Fourth Estate) do we have a full record.In 2000, an anonymous source donated a transcript of the trial to the British Library.It was authenticated, and has now been edited by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson.Anyone interested in Wilde's life and writing will be fascinated by this verbatim record which puts judge, prosecutor, defender, and of course Wilde himself on the stage of the Old Bailey to play out their roles verbatim.

Holland has a useful introduction to recall the details of how Wilde was snared into legal doom, spurred by his young man Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") to bother Bosie's abominable father Queensberry.When, after several skirmishes, Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, with the words "To Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite" (spelling was one of the Marquess's shortcomings), Wilde should have thrown it into the fire.Instead, egged on by Bosie, he took Queensberry to court for libel.It was the mistake of his life.; as Holland writes, "If I could ask my grandfather a single question, it would have to be, 'Why on earth did you do it?'"Wilde did not take advice that he leave the country, and so sealed his own doom.Most of the pages of this book are the words from the trial, and most of those words come from the bouts with Wilde in the witness box.Initially he seemed to enjoy his role in the events, and gave as good as he got.For much of the repartee reported here, the transcriber notes: "(_laughter_.)" and "(_more laughter_.)"But an eventual flippant answer overthrew Wilde on the stand, although his case could not have been won.When Carson asked about a companion, "Did you ever kiss him?" Wilde replied, "Oh, no, never in my life; he was a peculiarly plain boy."It was not long after that Wilde and his lawyers withdrew the charges, and Queensberry was declared not guilty.

If Queensbury was not guilty of libel, it was reasonable to think that his accusations were truthful, and with the evidence already gathered, Queensberry assisted in a speedy arrest of Wilde, who once again had refused advice that he leave the country.The subsequent trials, one with a hung jury and one finding him guilty of gross indecency, are not covered in this volume.Wilde had two years of hard labor, and three sad years of exile before his death in Paris in 1900.He produced the mordant "Ballad of Reading Gaol" but little else during these years, and while there are plenty of examples that his wit remained in conversation, we were robbed of subsequent examples of the delicious laughter that had come from each of his successively improving plays.This is a useful book as full documentation of the first trial, and Holland has given helpful notes throughout.Those who admire Wilde, however, will find it more than useful.Wilde was brilliant at Greek and admired Greek drama and life, and it is no exaggeration that the transcript of the trial, reading as it does like a piece of period theater, has all the marks of a classic tragedy. ... Read more

Product Description
“He had that rarest of all things, common sense.” And in the case of Oscar Wilde he also had a gift for delivering this common sense in sometimes pithy but always memorable statements. One of the world’s most unforgettable authors, Oscar Wilde had a comment for any and every occasion, many of which are quoted here. From art and actors to vice and virtue, this volume organizes 3109 Oscar Wilde quotations by subject matter, effectively providing a new way to enjoy Wilde’s considerable literary legacy. Quotations are taken from Wilde’s works, including The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, his correspondence, magazine articles and newspaper editorials. Some, which are otherwise not immediately verifiable, are garnered from reliable secondary sources. Sixty-seven chapters deal with topics as varied as death, domesticity, friends and enemies, with the source of each quote duly noted. The work, a fascinating read of Wilde’s acute observations, is indexed. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Review of "Oscar Wilde in Quotation
Anyone who is a fan of Oscar Wilde will appreciate this book tremendously. It is intelligently and elegantly organized. It captures the mind, heart, and soul of a completely unique human being who left his mark in the world as well as on the stage.
Many of the quotations are now a part of everyday humor, and the book brings to life many more that even a fan of Wilde may have overlooked.
The cover is very lovely visually, and sets the tone for what is inside.
Ms. Conrad has obviously done extensive research, and the book comes across as a labor of love. She has done a very scholarly piece of work, as well as a work that is very entertaining. Well done!

Great resource book!
This book of Oscar Wilde is long overdue; it is an absolute essential for the collector of Wilde. It is extremely well organized by topic which make it easy to find a particular quotation or one can just peruse for the pure pleasure of enjoying Oscar's wit and unique turn of a phrase. I've found shorter books of quotations, but this is the most complete and best yet. It's found a permanent home on my coffee table.

Terrific book!
What a great comprehensive guide, read and insight for all Oscar Wilde fans. (And if you're not one yet, you will be after reading this book.) If you've ever wanted to know everything he's said (lectures) or written (writings and personal correspondence), there's finally a book that fills this need- 3,100 quotes! (It's also now the largest collection of Oscar Wilde's quotes published to date.) It's fascinating to read quotes gleaned from Oscar Wilde's personal correspondence, which is something not easily found. Every single quote has been referenced so that you know exactly where each came from (especially if you want to look it up yourself). It's organized by sixty-seven different topics, so you can look up what he had to say on just about anything. A few examples are: "Vanity and Humility", "Politics, Government and Law", "Vice and Virtue", "Intelligence and Ignorance"- even a chapter devoted to what he said about himself in "About Oscar, by Oscar"! This is a terrific compilation, so interesting and fun to read. It's amazing how relevant it is for today- this is one of the great things about Oscar Wilde, his ability to capture all the facets of humanity with such timeless truths. I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde offers an essential introduction to one of the theater's most important and enigmatic writers. Although a general overview, the volume also offers some of the latest thinking on the dramatist and his impact on the twentieth century. Part One places Wilde's work within the cultural and historical context of his time and includes an opening essay by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland. Part Two looks at Wilde's essential work as playwright and general writer. The third group of essays examines the themes and factors that shaped Wilde's work and includes Wilde and his view of the Victorian woman, Wilde's sexual identities, and interpreting Wilde on stage. The volume provides a detailed chronology of Wilde's work, a bibliography for further reading, and illustrations from important productions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Necessity for any student of Wilde...


This collection is a necessity for any student of Wilde. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Well researched, interesting piece
Wonderful for all interested in Oscar Wilde -- and to all fascinated by the struggle for balance between art and life. ... Read more

Book Description
Authors in Context examines the work of major writers in relation to their own time and to the present day.Combining history with lively literary discussion, each volume provides comprehensive insight into texts in their context.Wit, dandy, literary anarchist, self-publicist, and homosexual martyr: Wilde achieved fame and notoriety at a time when mass culture and communication promoted the 'new' in every area of British life - 'New Women', 'New Hedonism', 'New Journalism', 'New Imperialism'.His plays, tales, and critical writings questioned traditional attitudes to religion, sexuality, women and the home, crime and punishment, and the freedom of the individual. This book examines the rich interplay between Wilde's society and his writings and shows the remarkable recontextualizing of Wilde and his work on stage, in film and the media in the century that has followed his death. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

'Oscar Wilde' explores the wit, the talent and the tragedy
Merely the utterance of the name 'Oscar Wilde' is enough to polarize people. He was many things to many people - a brilliant playwright, a charming wit, a flamboyant artist who flaunted his homosexuality during the conservative Victorian era.

John Sloan's 'Oscar Wilde' examines the Irish writer, his influences and his works, and how they impacted society then and today.

This book is part of the 'Authors in Context' series, a sub-series of the Oxford World's Classics series, which captures the essence of popular writers, including Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy (see my reviews on these books).

The series details a writer's life and times and also explores the social, cultural and political values that influenced their works. In addition to examining the writer's impact on their own times, each volume considers their interpretation today, in terms of being recontexualized on the stage and screen.

Author John Sloan is Fellow and Tutor in English at arris Manchester College, Oxford. He is a specialist in the literature of the late 19th century, and has written several books on the era, including A Literary Biography.

The book covers Wilde's extraordinary life, ranging from his early childhood and mother's influences, his marriage and his string of comedies, including the classic, The Importance of Being Earnest. It also details the court case and his subsequent imprisonment relating to homosexuality, and his final years as a broken man.

Sloan covers a great deal of ground in this volume, and explodes myths relating to the writer, now and then:

"The perception of Wilde's career as a writer has passed through several stages in this respect. In contrast to the established views of Wilde as an exceptional personality and dilettante, or as a conformist rebel or subversive, there has been an important revaluation of Wilde as a versatile professional writer, tuned to the necessary compromises and realities of literary production."

And in the final chapter, he concludes:

"Gradually, Wilde has begun to be seen as a serious literary figure, rather than as a dilettante and witty aesthete. This radical reassessment coincided with the liberalising atmosphere of British culture from the 1960s onwards which transformed Wilde into a cultural icon for those championing alternative values and the claims for the importance of popular culture. Finally, the gay rights movement and the rise of Irish literary studies in the late 1980s and 1990s resulted in new politicized readings and interpretations of Wilde and a greater appreciation of the contemporary relevance of his writings so that today Wilde's appeal to a wide variety of readers and theatre-goers is greater than at any time since his death."

'Oscar Wilde' includes an extensive chronology that covers in detail the major works and events of Wilde's life as well as an extensive further reading section plus a range of web sites on the writer.

While the book draws on a wide range of information, it is presented in a colorful and highly accessible manner, providing great insight into the man, society at the time, and Wilde's continuing relevance today.

-- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'. For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com ... Read more

Book Description
Following Oscar Wilde's 1895 trials for committing "acts of gross indecency with men," he lost his freedom, his family, his reputation, his will to create, and even his will to live. This book sets out to examine what it was about late-Victorian society that allowed this to happen, indeed needed it to happen, and what the trials tell us about the taste and morals of late-Victorian England. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Oscar Wilde's Wild, Wild London
After reading Profundis, I was struck by Oscar, his life, times, regrets and the depth of his self-inflicted pain.This book provides the reader with a perspective on the London of Oscars' time which must be thoroughlyunderstood to glean meaning to his life.Daily life is explored on varioussocial levels as are those contemporary laws and social mores of whichOscar spoke and often debated.This book is a must for those who wish toOBJECTIVELY get beyond Oscar's sexuality and popularized personnae.Afantastic overview of the London which harbored the young Wilde -- rejectedthe sexual Wilde -- and ultimately embraced the visionary Wilde. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (14)

The Best of Wilde
I'm very pleased with the book. All of Wilde's wit is right there at my fingertips. It's a handsome book, too. Thank you.

If you love Wilde, you MUST own this book!
Though the print is small for those of us over 40, it's worth it - if not, it would weigh about 10 pounds!As it is, it's a tome, but worth reading, and re-reading time and again.It has everything - everything! - that you'll ever hear mentioned - his stories, his novels, his essay's.
It would make a great gift for a young writer, as well.

This compilation complete, well printed, top 10 library purchase!
This particular compilation is not only complete, but is a well printed, well packaged addition to the books you would want in your top 10!

All Wilde
I had purchased this complete works of Oscar Wilde since I'd seen several of the recent releases of the theatrical versions of his plays and wanted to know more.As far as one volume complete works go, this has the usual weight (but not to heavy), small print (but not microscopic), and thin paper.It does have intros by Wilde's son and grandson which are interesting.Not having read much of Wilde it's been great being able to read not only his famous works (The Importance of Being Ernest, the Canterville Ghost) but also his lesser known ones (Lady Windemere's Fan).His plays are witty and often make interesting observations on human interactions, but they start seeming redundant after you've read more than three (every one seems to include a debonair, worldly cynic who offers his insights on the world--the characters played by Rupert Everett if he performs Wilde).I've yet to finish all the works but I look forward to attempting to do so.

I would recommend this book to new Wilde fans, literature majors, etc.For those just looking to read one or two of his works this would not be the way to start.

fantastic
Oscar Wilde is one of the best writers that ever lived and this book is a must have! ... Read more

Book Description
This unique volume reconstructs the original 1895 production of Wilde's timeless classic. Based upon a new, reconstructive method for the study of theatrical performance that aims to set the play securely in its historical and cultural moment, the edition offers a wealth of detail about the staging and acting and numerous first production and early revival photographs. The reconstructed text itself, differing in important ways from the 1899 first edition, recaptures the essential comic vitality of the play. ... Read more

Book Description
Oscar Wilde engages and fascinates his readers with his ability to make use of compatible contraries. Study some of his most important works, including The Importance of Being Earnest and Salome.

This title, Oscar Wilde, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Modern Critical Views series, examines the major works of Oscar Wilde through full-length critical essays by expert literary critics. In addition, this title features a short biography on Oscar Wilde, a chronology of the author's life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Book Description
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 proseshort 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'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Rather Boring Collection of 'Jokes'
I must admit that I have never held Oscar Wilde in much esteem as a serious writer. My sister is a fan and she bought this book. I had a browse through and it is what I had expected. This book will appeal to those who imagine themselves as intelligent and sophisticated. Although they may be entertained, they will learn nothing of consequence. Do not be fooled by Wilde's pseudo-philosophical style. There is nothing to be gained from a reading of this book besides mild, and brief, entertainment, or the satisfaction of knowing you can apprieciate the wit of a supposed intellectual, who is in fact nothing of the sort.

I would also like to correct a mistake I noticed in a previous review. Oscar Wilde is not an 'English Gentleman' - He is in fact from Ireland.

A HANDYAND NASTY LITTLE COMPILATION
This small book is very big in biting power. It is a compilation of witty and revealing bits of Oscar Wilde's genius. If you don't want to sift through all Wilde's works, or the dog ate his books that you had in the basement, or maybe at your age you don't remember the fundamental lessons that you read about style, wit and life by this English gentleman THEN YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK.
A comprehensive little manual that will enable you to outwit your opponents and reach the epythome of the educated insult (which is very interesting because you will be able to start insulting your boss, without any consequences. Or maybe you will be promoted...)

Never be left without something pretentious to say again..
Ever wanted to be one of those know-it-alls at parties with those great haughty insults and witty remarks?

Buy this book and never worry again. Definatly a good buy. Fun, Funny, and Educational (?). If you like OscarWilde, you'll like this book. ... Read more