The Major Works: Including the Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (Editor)

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'.

Contents:

Fiction
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
The Happy Prince
The Devoted Friend
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Critical Dialogues
The Decay of Lying
The Critic as Artist Part I
The Critic as Artist Part II

Plays
Salome
Lady Windermere's Fan
An Ideal Husband
The Importance of Being Earnest

Poems
The Harlot's House
The Sphinx
The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Poems in Prose
The Artist
The Disciple
The House of Judgement

Aphorisms
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Poetry, Plays, Short Stories, Theatre, 19th Century

672 pages, Paperback

Published September 28, 2000

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

[Laura]

I LOVE OSCAR WILDE DETAILED AND CAREFUL WRITTING
I ENJOY THE PEACE HE WRITES WITH AND HIS KNLOLEDGE
OF HUMAN DESIRES.
I GOT SCARED WHEN READING DORIAN GRAY.BUT THIS FANTASY IS AS CURRENT AS FAUSTO.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book three or four years ago for a graduate course I was taking on Wilde and Joyce. For that class, we read mostly Wilde's criticism (the dialogues "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist I & II"). Studying these and seeing Wilde's influence on Joyce helped shake me from the opinion that Wilde was clever but shallow and to see him as a canny and restless subversive. Still, as I read his major plays this winter (trying to pick one for the Brit Lit course) and reread The Picture of Dorian Gray (in order to put it on the extra credit list), I found I still can't quite get my mind around Wilde—can't settle the question of why his work fascinates and disturbs me while remaining ever beyond my endorsement. I love to cheer on his swashbuckling satire of Victorian self-satisfaction, narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy (and wish we had a latter-day Wilde to counter our new Victorians). But I can never find a norm to stand on in his work. I find certain ideas of Aestheticism compelling—for instance, the effort to disentangle art from a slavish relationship to moral norms—but, practiced in the form of Dandyism, it seems as ridiculous to me as Philistinism. Still, I find that Wilde's work pricks at my own complacency, that I can't read him without laughing at myself and without brooding over the world's almost unbearable insanity. The dissatisfaction that I can't quite articulate is part of why I find myself coming back to read him again.

[Red · Rating 5 out of 5]

What the hell was I thinking not reading this before?

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

distinctive at parts

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compilation of all his major works. Must read "Picture of Dorian Gray." Witty, intelligent, amusing. His theory of aesthetics is tantalizingly subversive, so be careful!

Been semi-looking for "De Profundis." If anyone has, please lend me!

[Caron Thornton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. A real insight into the evil men/ women do and how the soul shows the wear. Whether the external face reveals the truth or not, our conscience haunts us. Wilde was a brilliant writer, witty and wise.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some reason I'd managed to skip Wilde entirely despite a degree in English Lit. I don't think he'll ever be one of my favourite writers but he certainly had a lot to say for himself. Worth a read but the stuff on criticism was pretty hard going.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping, page-turning novel of ideas!

[Anna Bierer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am loving this book.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought the whole works collection in Southern France in the summer of '98. Why?... Because it was so cheap, and who doesn't like the HAPPY PRINCE?

[Stephani · Rating 5 out of 5]

a twisted, tasty treat.

[Martin Brant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars on the prose alone. Very elegant.

[Kerry Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always a treat, every time I read it.

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intersting way to express how the events in our life shape our character. Oscar Wilde is a masterful author. I really enjoyed this book.

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eery tale of a dark prideful "soul" told by the master story teller Oscar Wilde. Creepy but thought provoking.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read this in high school you should read it again. Complex portrayal of aesthetics and the role of art, neatly packaged in a melodramatically compelling novel.

[Joseph Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just bought this thick collection from National Bookstore for only 99 pesos. Would read sometime this week.

[Glenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Picture of Dorian Gray

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely enjoyed reading Wilde's work. Witty dialogues about life - often very contemporary.

[Frantic_Fangirl19 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could be boring at times. 50/50. Quite slow paced so took a while to read.

[Paco · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[jessica isnt cool · Rating 3 out of 5]

wilde is certainly witty ! i liked salome especially. his essays are also delightful. i did not like ernest or ideal husband i am sorry !!!!

[Haythem Bastawy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of Wilde's most read works which has fallen short off being the Wilde collection. Wilde's works are majorly short and this book could have easily become the complete works of Wilde, had the rest of his works been included.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twisted, but oh so good

[Giuseppe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picture of Dorian Grey & Salome and selected poems

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of his stories are quite compelling if macabre I did find his essays on on the critic as art rather dedious and pedantic however

[Kevin Yee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection. My favorites is The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Sphinx is also a very interesting poem.