The Critic as Artist

by Oscar Wilde

132 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[Bentley Jimmerson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The older I get, the more I tire of the rhetoric of something to learn from someone who is just simply so critical of everything. I think the dialogue bores and it gets to a point where I, as a the reader, can resent the read and not take any of it in. That being said, I found much of it beautiful and many great lessons within, although the repetition made me hesitant to further engage. At the moment in my life, where sadness features in much of it, I particularly loved the sentence: “and you will find yourself worshipping sorrow as you have never worshipped joy.” Well written, but I would not read again.

[Carolyn Lipka · Rating 5 out of 5]

don’t remember why i bought this or picked it up but im glad i did. eminently quotable. i love thinking deeply about art and talking about creating and criticizing and being a fan. i know people don’t care about criticism or think that “they don’t build statues of critics” but i don’t care because i love to hear what other people think of art — i love to have my perspective challenged and widened and contradicted and supported!!! long live criticism!!!!!

[Sophie Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

looooove loooooooved reading this. I am smart girl read fancy book. many word different time period. so many statements blow mind up big big boom boom. if u haven’t read then I am better than u. also cheap as chips on sale at the art gallery for 10 buckaroos.

[Sara Pereda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous book. About how to feel and think deeply over everything. About the critical spirit.

[Facundo Semhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro que resume toda mi filosofía estética. El primer libro que compré en el exterior y por el cual guardo gran afecto.