Lord Arthur Savile'S Crime & Other Stories by Oscar Wilde, first published in 1891, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.
»The Sphinx Without a Secret« is a short story by Oscar Wilde, originally published in 1891. OSCAR WILDE, born in 1854 in Dublin, died in 1900 in Paris, was an Irish prose writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Wilde's significance as a symbol for persecuted homosexuals around the world is immeasurable. Wilde himself was sentenced to prison and hard labour, his works were boycotted, theatrical productions were shut down, and he was publicly vilified. The Picture of Dorian Gray [1890] is his most famous work.
Few authors are as closely associated with English wit as Oscar Wilde: the sharp-witted dandy, always ready with a cutting remark. His brilliant conversational skills made him famous even before he began his literary career. The stories in this volume showcase his drastic humour and scathing social critique. Among them, »The Model Millionaire« upends social hierarchies, and in »The Canterville Ghost,« ancient traditions meet modern times in the form of a vulgar and unsentimental American family, creating problems for a ghost that has had it too easy for centuries. OSCAR WILDE, born in 1854 in Dublin, died in 1900 in Paris, was an Irish prose writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Wilde's significance as a symbol for persecuted homosexuals around the world is immeasurable. Wilde himself was sentenced to prison and hard labour, his works were boycotted, theatrical productions were shut down, and he was publicly vilified. The Picture of Dorian Gray [1890] is his most famous work.
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."
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, and a plentitude of aphorisms, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially "The Importance of Being Earnest".
An innovative new edition of nine classic short stories from one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era. “I cannot think other than in stories,” Oscar Wilde once confessed to his friend André Gide. In this new selection of his short fiction, Wilde’s gifts as a storyteller are on full display, accompanied by informative facing-page annotations from Wilde biographer and scholar Nicholas Frankel. A wide-ranging introduction brings readers into the world from which the author drew inspiration. Each story in the collection brims with Wilde’s trademark wit, style, and sharp social criticism. Many are reputed to have been written for children, although Wilde insisted this was not true and that his stories would appeal to all “those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy.” “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” stands alongside Wilde’s comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, while other stories—including “The Happy Prince,” the tale of a young ruler who had never known sorrow, and “The Nightingale and the Rose,” the story of a nightingale who sacrifices herself for true love—embrace the theme of tragic, forbidden love and are driven by an undercurrent of seriousness, even despair, at the repressive social and sexual values of Wilde’s day. Like his later writings, Wilde’s stories are a sweeping indictment of the society that would imprison him for his homosexuality in 1895, five years before his death at the age of forty-six. Published here in the form in which Victorian readers first encountered them, Wilde’s short stories contain much that appeals to modern readers of vastly different ages and temperaments. They are the perfect distillation of one of the Victorian era’s most remarkable writers.
For the first time in one volume, this complete collection of all the short fiction Oscar Wilde published contains such social and literary parodies as "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" and "The Canterville Ghost;" such well-known fairy tales as "The Happy Prince," "The Young King," and "The Fisherman and his Soul;" an imaginary portrait of the dedicatee of Shakespeare's Sonnets entitled "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.;" and the parables Wilde referred to as "Poems in Prose," including "The Artist," "The House of Judgment," and "The Teacher of Wisdom."
'Wilde did not converse - he told tales.' Oscar Wilde was already famous as a brilliant wit and raconteur when he first began to publish his short stories in the late 1880s. They have never lacked readers and admirers, George Orwell and W. B. Yeats among them. The stories give free rein to Wilde's originality, literary skill, and sophistication. They include poignant fairy-tales such as 'The Happy Prince' and 'The Selfish Giant', and the extravagant comedy and social observation of 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' and 'The Canterville Ghost'. They also encompass the daring narrative experiments of 'The Portrait of Mr. W. H.', Wilde's fictional investigation into the identity of the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, and the 'Poems in Prose', based on the Gospel stories. This edition demonstrates the centrality of Wilde's shorter fiction in his literary career, and his continuing development and experimentation with the short story format. Combining myth, romance, and irony, Wilde's stories enthral and challenge the reader. 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 book explores Wilde's works from the hypothesis that they call upon the active participation of the reader in the production of meaning. It has a twofold objective: first, it shows that Wilde's emphasis on the creative role of the audience in his critical writings makes him conceive the reader as a co-creator in the construction of meaning. Second, it analyses the strategies which Wilde employs to impel the reader to collaborate in the creation of meaning of his literary works and casts light upon the social criticism derived from these. The examination of Wilde’s writings reveals how he gradually combined more sophisticated techniques that encouraged the reader's dynamic role with the progressive exploitation of self-advertising strategies for professional purposes. These allowed the ‘commercial’ Oscar to make his works successful among the Victorian public without betraying the ‘literary’ Wilde’s aesthetic principles. The present study re-evaluates Wilde as a critic and as a writer. It demonstrates that, while Wilde the ‘myth’ was ahead of his time in many ways, Wilde the ‘ARTIST’ anticipated in his aesthetic theory various themes which occupy contemporary literary theoreticians. Thus, it may contribute to give him the status he rightly deserves in the history of literature.
A collection of stories, including two of Wilde's most famous: 'The Canterville Ghost', in which a young American girl helps to free the tormented spirit that haunts an old English castle and 'The Happy Prince', who was not as happy as he seemed. Often whimsical and sometimes sad, they all shine with poetry and magic.
