Book description
Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama
emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining
epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. Includes Lady
Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, A
Florentine Tragedy and The Importance of Being Earnest, which appears in
full with the "Grigsby" scene which originally made up the
fourth act. Born in Ireland, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
(1854-1900) was educated in Dublin & Oxford and went on to become
the leading and most prominent exponent of flamboyant aestheticism. As
well as his many plays, he wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1890), and published several volumes of poetry and criticism. He was
imprisoned in 1895 for homosexual offences and after his release he died
in exile in Paris. Richard Cave has edited a selection of Yeats' plays
for Penguin Classics.
