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The Portable Oscar Wilde
Includes the following works: Novels— The Portrait of Dorian Gray ; Plays— Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest ; Writings—De Profundis, Critic as Artist, and Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Very Young; and selections from Lady Windermere's Fan , An Ideal Husband , and A Woman of No Importance .
741 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1946
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383 people want to read
About the author
Oscar Wilde
5,489 books38.8k followersOscar 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 17, 2021
Arthur Conan Doyle meets Oscar Wilde
Stoddart, the American editor of Lippincott's Magazine, proved to be an excellent fellow, and had me and another writer to dinner in London. I discovered the other was Oscar Wilde, who was already a famous writer. It was indeed a golden evening for me. Wilde to my surprise had read my novel, "Micah Clarke" and was enthusiastic about it, so that I did not feel a complete outsider. His conversation left an indelible impression upon my mind. He towered above us all, and yet had the art of seeming to be interested in all that we could say. He had delicacy of feeling and tact, for the monologue man, however, clever, can never be a gentleman at heart. He took as well as gave, but what he gave was unique. He had a curious precision of statement, a delicate flavour of humour, and a trick of small gestures to illustrate his meaning.
The result of the evening was that both Wilde and I promised to write books for Lippincott's Magazine—Wilde's contribution was "The Picture of Dorian Grey," a book which is surely upon a high moral plane, while I wrote "The Sign of Four," in which Holmes made his second appearance. A young Rudyard Kipling, who could not make the dinner, wrote "The Light That Failed" for the magazine.
-Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks14/1400...
=============
Some wit and wisdom
per my mother in law....
"Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go."
per my father in law...
“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”
==
“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
“Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.”
“Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.”
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
“I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”
“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Life is too short to learn German”
“Irony is wasted on the stupid”
“The one charm about the past is that it is the past.”
“Punctuality is the thief of time”
“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
"As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested."
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
"Romantic art deals with the exception and the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace, type are artistically uninteresting. Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination."
"In a world run by fools the writer can only chronicle the doings of fools and their victims."
"Comedy is a weapon more dangerous than tragedy."
Stoddart, the American editor of Lippincott's Magazine, proved to be an excellent fellow, and had me and another writer to dinner in London. I discovered the other was Oscar Wilde, who was already a famous writer. It was indeed a golden evening for me. Wilde to my surprise had read my novel, "Micah Clarke" and was enthusiastic about it, so that I did not feel a complete outsider. His conversation left an indelible impression upon my mind. He towered above us all, and yet had the art of seeming to be interested in all that we could say. He had delicacy of feeling and tact, for the monologue man, however, clever, can never be a gentleman at heart. He took as well as gave, but what he gave was unique. He had a curious precision of statement, a delicate flavour of humour, and a trick of small gestures to illustrate his meaning.
The result of the evening was that both Wilde and I promised to write books for Lippincott's Magazine—Wilde's contribution was "The Picture of Dorian Grey," a book which is surely upon a high moral plane, while I wrote "The Sign of Four," in which Holmes made his second appearance. A young Rudyard Kipling, who could not make the dinner, wrote "The Light That Failed" for the magazine.
-Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks14/1400...
=============
Some wit and wisdom
per my mother in law....
"Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go."
per my father in law...
“With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”
==
“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
“Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.”
“Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.”
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
“I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”
“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Life is too short to learn German”
“Irony is wasted on the stupid”
“The one charm about the past is that it is the past.”
“Punctuality is the thief of time”
“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
"As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested."
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
"Romantic art deals with the exception and the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace, type are artistically uninteresting. Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination."
"In a world run by fools the writer can only chronicle the doings of fools and their victims."
"Comedy is a weapon more dangerous than tragedy."
January 6, 2023
“No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their
peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
The amount of quotes I have highlighted within 741 pages is by no means enough. If I could highlight everything, I would.
I cannot tell you how many times I have read, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” for it is in my opinion one of the best stories ever told. And my Mother described his writing as “literary crème brûlée!” You will find no part of me in disagreement.
Yet, what struck me most was in “De Profundis” the end of his non-fictional letter to someone who betrayed him. To which it emotionally destroyed me in the best possible way. Sitting in public with my eyes closed just to feel it all. “I am, yet from me you may have still much to gain.
You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sor-row, and its beauty.” For how often we look at what others teach us instead of what we teach us.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their
peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
The amount of quotes I have highlighted within 741 pages is by no means enough. If I could highlight everything, I would.
I cannot tell you how many times I have read, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” for it is in my opinion one of the best stories ever told. And my Mother described his writing as “literary crème brûlée!” You will find no part of me in disagreement.
Yet, what struck me most was in “De Profundis” the end of his non-fictional letter to someone who betrayed him. To which it emotionally destroyed me in the best possible way. Sitting in public with my eyes closed just to feel it all. “I am, yet from me you may have still much to gain.
You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sor-row, and its beauty.” For how often we look at what others teach us instead of what we teach us.
May 2, 2021
Most of this stuff was pretty silly, meager structures to hang witticisms on. The two exceptions were Salome, a very strange sort of dream, and De Profundis, a pained work of genius. Wilde's opus on the suffering of love, a force he can recognize, criticize, epigrammatize, yet cannot control, has to be the greatest thing he ever wrote.
July 17, 2009
I managed to get through about a third of "The Critic as Artist," the two plays, Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest, his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, about one-fifth of "De Profundis" which is the amazingly (amazingly) long letter to his ex-boyfriend, and some of his poems. What an interesting character he was! Modesty was not one of his traits, and his discussions of "Art" made me role my eyes, but I really enjoyed his works of fiction, and was left feeling bad for the poor guy despite his whining
February 2, 2012
Oscar Wilde is a very meticulous writing when based on word choice and sentence structure. All of his magnificents pieces show great knowledge of literature, great intelligence and great domination of the language. His philosophy impresses me, although I disagree with him at some levels, I agree with him on his messages.
November 8, 2007
catching up on another of those classics that I missed out on somewhere along the way. Made me want to know more about Oscar's life after prison. Did he write anything worth remembering once he 'found humility'?
August 5, 2024
Read all of his works in here, Salome was beautiful and I even watched the German play on YouTube. Suffer me thy kiss Jokanaan🤑. But a picture of Dorian Gray is the ultimate decadent short story and the best work by Oscar Wilde. I love all of his works, but I love how his personality was part of being a poet in the decadent era. I still think about the lessons of De Prefundis, if you are going to go to prison with hate that’s all that will fester, something along those lines. I don’t feel like finding quotes to put on here but it was beautiful and kinda nuts that this all even happened, all my homies hate lord Alfred Douglass 💯
on-my-shelves
August 3, 2019Salomé: 2 stars. This might have to do with my deep interest in ancient history and philosophy, but I found the play almost to the point of offensive, particularly the first half. I was extremely uncomfortable with the way Wilde made a mockery of certain people and ideas -- most likely, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Jews, religious principles, and what we nowadays call "philosophical" thinking. Given that the play was supposed to be an adaptation of the Biblical story of Salomé, the woman who beheaded John the Baptist, was the following sweeping generalisation, condescendingly enumerated, necessary?
Similarly, what was the point of dragging the Stoic philosophers in?
I was also bothered by Wilde's ridicule of religious arguments -- those back-and-forths between the Jews (410-11).I can imagine how meticulous exposition of ordinary and abstract matters might come across to some as comical and absurd. But ultimately, I do think such a "philosophical" approach is essential to our gradual understanding of reality: this is how we can unpack and address fundamental, challenging questions -- e.g., does God exist? what is knowledge? how ought we live?
Yes, "it is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees" (419). We should not, however, underestimate the role of critical thinking in our lives, especially when coupled with imagination.
Within there are Jews from Jerusalem who are tearing each other in pieces over their foolish ceremonies, and barbarians who drink and drink, and spill their wine on the pavement, and Greeks from Smyrna with painted eyes and painted cheeks, and frizzed hair curled in columns, and Egyptians silent and subtle, with long nails of jade and russet cloaks, and Romans brutal and coarse, with their uncouth jargon (397).
Similarly, what was the point of dragging the Stoic philosophers in?
There be some who slay themselves, sire. They are the Stoics. The Stoics are people of no cultivation. They are ridiculous people (408).
I was also bothered by Wilde's ridicule of religious arguments -- those back-and-forths between the Jews (410-11).I can imagine how meticulous exposition of ordinary and abstract matters might come across to some as comical and absurd. But ultimately, I do think such a "philosophical" approach is essential to our gradual understanding of reality: this is how we can unpack and address fundamental, challenging questions -- e.g., does God exist? what is knowledge? how ought we live?
Yes, "it is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees" (419). We should not, however, underestimate the role of critical thinking in our lives, especially when coupled with imagination.
December 14, 2019
A witty producer of bold claims and questionable remarks.
[1854-1900, Ireland, France]
Favourites:
The Critic As An Artist
"Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves"
[1854-1900, Ireland, France]
Favourites:
The Critic As An Artist
"Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves"
April 4, 2022
well this was absolutely transcending thank you very much (especially de profundis)
i couldn't get through the 20 or so pages about Jesus or the end of the critic as artists even though im sure it was dead interesting, but i will at some point. the letters were great too.
i couldn't get through the 20 or so pages about Jesus or the end of the critic as artists even though im sure it was dead interesting, but i will at some point. the letters were great too.
May 5, 2020
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
August 3, 2010
Used this as a convenient way to read some Wilde I had missed out on. So the parts I read were:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
De Profundis
Ballad of Reading Gaol
and the letters from Wilde included in this volume (only about half a dozen)
The Picture of Dorian Gray
De Profundis
Ballad of Reading Gaol
and the letters from Wilde included in this volume (only about half a dozen)
February 20, 2017
Enjoyed every page, poem, essay and excerpt, letter, phrase, philosophy, and play (despite the punny corniness and contrived coincidences of The Importance of Being Earnest), and novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray).
August 3, 2007
this is a great colletion of oscar wilde works.
November 24, 2010
God I am so glad to be done with this. Should have been a short story.
February 10, 2013
The Picture of Dorian Gray
August 12, 2013
For QEII, read The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
April 10, 2018
PLenty of Wilde to choose from in this handy volume - Dorian Grey, Importance of Being Earnest, Reading Gaol, etc.
November 30, 2025
Patron and godfather of the modern age, agent provocateur, martyr to gay rights and sexual freedom. Where would D.H. Lawrence, the Rolling Stones, and David Bowie be without Oscar?
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews