Wilde's works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. He wrote tender fairy stories for children employing all his grace, artistry and wit, of which the best-known is The Happy Prince. Counterpoints to this were his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which shocked and outraged many readers of his day, and his stories for adults which exhibited his fascination with the relations between serene art and decadent life. Wilde took London by storm with his plays, particularly his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. His essays - in particular De Profundis- and his Ballad of Reading Gaol, both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection of the works of one of the most exciting writers of the late nineteenth century.
Here is Oscar Wilde revealed in his own words--including more than 200 previously unpublished letters--available to coincide with the one hundredth anniversary of his death Deliciously wicked, astoundingly clever, and often outright shocking, Oscar Wilde put his art into his work and his genius into his life. In this collection, replete with newly discovered letters, the full extent of that genius is unveiled. Charting his life from his Irish upbringing to fame in his fin de siècle London to infamy and exile in Paris, the letters--written between 1875 and 1900 to publishers and fans, friends and lovers, enemies and adversaries--resound with Wilde's wit, brilliance, and humanity. Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, and Rupert Hart-Davis have produced a provocative and revealing self-portrait. Wilde's reputation as a serious thinker, humorous writer, and gay icon continues to flourish. The Complete Letters is an intimate exploration of his life and thoughts--Wilde in his own words.
"The Brontës had their moors, I have my marshes," Lorine Niedecker wrote of flood-prone Black Hawk Island in Wisconsin, where she lived most of her life. Her life by water, as she called it, could not have been further removed from the avant-garde poetry scene where she also made a home. Niedecker is one of the most important poets of her generation and an essential member of the Objectivist circle. Her work attracted high praise from her peers--Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Cid Corman, Clayton Eshleman--with whom she exchanged life-sustaining letters. Niedecker was also a major woman poet who interrogated issues of gender, domesticity, work, marriage, and sexual politics long before the modern feminist movement. Her marginal status, both geographically and as a woman, translates into a major poetry. Niedecker's lyric voice is one of the most subtle and sensuous of the twentieth century. Her ear is constantly alive to sounds of nature, oddities of vernacular speech, textures of vowels and consonants. Often compared to Emily Dickinson, Niedecker writes a poetry of wit and emotion, cosmopolitan experimentation and down-home American speech. This much-anticipated volume presents all of Niedecker's surviving poetry, plays, and creative prose in the sequence of their composition. It includes many poems previously unpublished in book form plus all of Niedecker's surviving 1930s surrealist work and her 1936-46 folk poetry, bringing to light the formative experimental phases of her early career. With an introduction that offers an account of the poet's life and notes that provide detailed textual information, this book will be the definitive reader's and scholar's edition of Niedecker's work.
The Collected Oscar Wilde, by Oscar Wilde, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars /O:P Biographies of the authors. Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events. Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work. Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations. Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate. All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences?biographical, historical, and literary?to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. A renowned eccentric, dandy, and man-about-town, Oscar Wilde was foremost a dazzling wit and dramatic genius whose plays, poems, essays, and fiction contain some of the most frequently quoted quips and passages in the English language. This volume features a wide selection of Wilde's literary output, including the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, an immensely popular play filled with satiric epigrams that mercilessly expose Victorian hypocrisy; The Portrait of Mr. W. H., a story proposing that Shakespeare's sonnets were inspired by the poet's love for a young man; The House of Pomegranates, the author's collection of fairy tales; lectures Wilde delivered, first in the United States, where he exhorted his audiences to love beauty and art, and then in England, where he presented his impressions of America; his two major literary-theoretical works,?The Decay of Lying and?The Critic as Artist; and a selection of verse, including his great poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in which Wilde famously declared that?each man kills the thing he loves. A testament to Wilde's incredible versatility, this collection displays his legendary wit, brilliant use of language, and penetrating insight into the human condition. Angus Fletcher is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, City University of New York, and the author of Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode, Colors of the Mind, and A New Theory for American Poetry, among other books.
Amusing, thought-provoking epigrams, aphorisms, and other jests from the plays, essays, and lively conversation of Oscar Wilde offer a feast of humorous and profound quips. Nearly 400 quotes.
Collected her in one omnibus edition are Oscar Wilde's most important works including The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and The Canterville Ghost. These works of poetry, fiction, drama, and prose encompass Wilde's entire career and they display his range of style and wit. Wilde is one of the most important writers in the history of the English language. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.
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.
Complete texts of "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," "A House of Pomegranates," "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," "Poems in Prose," and "The Portrait of Mr. W. H."
