author - "Oscar Wilde"
Description
The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s most popular play today, enduring thanks to its easy humor, witty dialog, and clever satire. It was also one of his more successful plays, despite its first run being prematurely ended after only 86 performances. The main characters pretend to be other people in order to escape social obligations, with the resulting confusion of identities driving the plot and the humor behind it.
Earnest also holds the sad distinction of being Wilde’s last published play. A feud with an aristocrat whose son was Wilde’s lover led to a court case revealing Wilde as a homosexual—a crime in those days, and punishable by imprisonment with hard labor.
Description
The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published as a serial in Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, and the publishers thought it would so offend readers that they removed nearly 500 words without Wilde’s approval. Wilde soon expanded it and republished it as a novel, including a short preface justifying his art. Even though his contemporaries considered it so offensive that some argued for his prosecution, Dorian Gray today survives as a classic philosophical novel that explores themes of aestheticism and double lives. Couched in Wilde’s trademark cutting wit, Dorian Gray is still being adapted today, with Dorian and his moldering portrait remaining cultural touchstones.
ul poisonous flowers. The adders hissed at him as he went by, and the bright parrots flew screaming from branch to branch. Huge tortoises lay asleep upon the hot mud. The trees were full of apes and peacocks.
On and on he went, till he reached the outskirts of the wood, and there he saw an immense multitude of men toiling in the bed of a dried-up river. They swarmed up the crag like ants. They dug deep pits in the ground and went down into them. Some of them cleft the rocks with great axes; others grabbled in the sand.
They tore up the cactus by its roots, and trampled on the scarlet blossoms. They hurried about, calling to each other, and no man was idle.
From the darkness of a cavern Death and Avarice watched them, and Death said, 'I am weary; give me a third of them and let me go.' But Avarice shook her head. 'They are my servants,' she answered.
And Death said to her, 'What hast thou in thy hand?'
'I have three grains of corn,' she answered; 'what is that to thee?'
hat LordIllingworth is aiming at. I heard that he was offered Vienna. Butthat may not be true.
LADY CAROLINE. I don't think that England should be representedabroad by an unmarried man, Jane. It might lead to complications.
LADY HUNSTANTON. You are too nervous, Caroline. Believe me, youare too nervous. Besides, Lord Illingworth may marry any day. Iwas in hopes he would have married lady Kelso. But I believe hesaid her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forgetwhich. I regret it very much. She was made to be an ambassador'swife.
LADY CAROLINE. She certainly has a wonderful faculty ofremembering people's names, and forgetting their faces.
LADY HUNSTANTON. Well, that is very natural, Caroline, is it not?[To Footman.] Tell Henry to wait for an answer. I have written aline to your dear mother, Gerald, to tell her your good news, andto say she really must come to dinner.
[Exit Footman.]
GERALD. That is awfully kind of you, Lady Hunstanton. [ToHESTER.] Will
s, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate
ent to put Lord Goring into a class quite by himself. But he is developing charmingly!
LORD CAVERSHAM. Into what?
MABEL CHILTERN. [With a little curtsey.] I hope to let you know very soon, Lord Caversham!
MASON. [Announcing guests.] Lady Markby. Mrs. Cheveley.
[Enter LADY MARKBY and MRS. CHEVELEY. LADY MARKBY is a pleasant, kindly, popular woman, with gray hair e la marquise and good lace. MRS. CHEVELEY, who accompanies her, is tall and rather slight. Lips very thin and highly-coloured, a line of scarlet on a pallid face. Venetian red hair, aquiline nose, and long throat. Rouge accentuates the natural paleness of her complexion. Gray-green eyes that move restlessly. She is in heliotrope, with diamonds. She looks rather like an orchid, and makes great demands on one's curiosity. In all her movements she is extremely graceful. A work of art, on the whole, but showing the influence of too many schools.]
LADY MARKBY. Good evening, dear Gertrude! So kind of you to let me bring my
ast in the carp-pond at the end of the King's Walk. With the enthusiastic egotism of the true artist, he went over his most celebrated performances, and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as "Red Reuben, or the Strangled Babe," his début as "Guant Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground. And after all this some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at his head! It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever been treated in this manner. Accordingly, he determined to have vengeance, and remained till daylight in an attitude of deep thought.
III
The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not b
ck. That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.
Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.
Jack. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.
Algernon. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.
Jack. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.
Algernon. My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about. [The sound of an electric bell is heard.] Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner. Now, if I get her out of the way for ten minutes, so that you can have an opportunity for proposing to Gwendolen, may I dine with you to-night at Wi
a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once."
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is, Harry," he murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I ch
Description
Early in his literary career Oscar Wilde published two collections of children’s stories and fairy tales. This edition contains the stories from both The Happy Prince and Other Tales, published in 1888, and A House of Pomegranates, published in 1891. The two books present two slightly different sensibilities, and though stories like “The Happy Prince” and “The Selfish Giant” have grown into timeless children’s classics, the darker tales told in A House of Pomegranates remain less well known and were, as Wilde said, “intended neither for the British child nor the British public.”
While Wilde is best known as a playwright and celebrated for his wit and aphorisms, his early writings contain the seeds of his biting criticism of late Victorian society. And this was true no more so than in these fairy stories which explore the ideals of friendship, love, kindness and charity; the stories both celebrate these attributes and show how they are too often twisted or ignored by the very societies that espouse them.
Description
The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s most popular play today, enduring thanks to its easy humor, witty dialog, and clever satire. It was also one of his more successful plays, despite its first run being prematurely ended after only 86 performances. The main characters pretend to be other people in order to escape social obligations, with the resulting confusion of identities driving the plot and the humor behind it.
Earnest also holds the sad distinction of being Wilde’s last published play. A feud with an aristocrat whose son was Wilde’s lover led to a court case revealing Wilde as a homosexual—a crime in those days, and punishable by imprisonment with hard labor.
Description
The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published as a serial in Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, and the publishers thought it would so offend readers that they removed nearly 500 words without Wilde’s approval. Wilde soon expanded it and republished it as a novel, including a short preface justifying his art. Even though his contemporaries considered it so offensive that some argued for his prosecution, Dorian Gray today survives as a classic philosophical novel that explores themes of aestheticism and double lives. Couched in Wilde’s trademark cutting wit, Dorian Gray is still being adapted today, with Dorian and his moldering portrait remaining cultural touchstones.
ul poisonous flowers. The adders hissed at him as he went by, and the bright parrots flew screaming from branch to branch. Huge tortoises lay asleep upon the hot mud. The trees were full of apes and peacocks.
On and on he went, till he reached the outskirts of the wood, and there he saw an immense multitude of men toiling in the bed of a dried-up river. They swarmed up the crag like ants. They dug deep pits in the ground and went down into them. Some of them cleft the rocks with great axes; others grabbled in the sand.
They tore up the cactus by its roots, and trampled on the scarlet blossoms. They hurried about, calling to each other, and no man was idle.
From the darkness of a cavern Death and Avarice watched them, and Death said, 'I am weary; give me a third of them and let me go.' But Avarice shook her head. 'They are my servants,' she answered.
And Death said to her, 'What hast thou in thy hand?'
'I have three grains of corn,' she answered; 'what is that to thee?'
hat LordIllingworth is aiming at. I heard that he was offered Vienna. Butthat may not be true.
LADY CAROLINE. I don't think that England should be representedabroad by an unmarried man, Jane. It might lead to complications.
LADY HUNSTANTON. You are too nervous, Caroline. Believe me, youare too nervous. Besides, Lord Illingworth may marry any day. Iwas in hopes he would have married lady Kelso. But I believe hesaid her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forgetwhich. I regret it very much. She was made to be an ambassador'swife.
LADY CAROLINE. She certainly has a wonderful faculty ofremembering people's names, and forgetting their faces.
LADY HUNSTANTON. Well, that is very natural, Caroline, is it not?[To Footman.] Tell Henry to wait for an answer. I have written aline to your dear mother, Gerald, to tell her your good news, andto say she really must come to dinner.
[Exit Footman.]
GERALD. That is awfully kind of you, Lady Hunstanton. [ToHESTER.] Will
s, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate
ent to put Lord Goring into a class quite by himself. But he is developing charmingly!
LORD CAVERSHAM. Into what?
MABEL CHILTERN. [With a little curtsey.] I hope to let you know very soon, Lord Caversham!
MASON. [Announcing guests.] Lady Markby. Mrs. Cheveley.
[Enter LADY MARKBY and MRS. CHEVELEY. LADY MARKBY is a pleasant, kindly, popular woman, with gray hair e la marquise and good lace. MRS. CHEVELEY, who accompanies her, is tall and rather slight. Lips very thin and highly-coloured, a line of scarlet on a pallid face. Venetian red hair, aquiline nose, and long throat. Rouge accentuates the natural paleness of her complexion. Gray-green eyes that move restlessly. She is in heliotrope, with diamonds. She looks rather like an orchid, and makes great demands on one's curiosity. In all her movements she is extremely graceful. A work of art, on the whole, but showing the influence of too many schools.]
LADY MARKBY. Good evening, dear Gertrude! So kind of you to let me bring my
ast in the carp-pond at the end of the King's Walk. With the enthusiastic egotism of the true artist, he went over his most celebrated performances, and smiled bitterly to himself as he recalled to mind his last appearance as "Red Reuben, or the Strangled Babe," his début as "Guant Gibeon, the Blood-sucker of Bexley Moor," and the furore he had excited one lovely June evening by merely playing ninepins with his own bones upon the lawn-tennis ground. And after all this some wretched modern Americans were to come and offer him the Rising Sun Lubricator, and throw pillows at his head! It was quite unbearable. Besides, no ghost in history had ever been treated in this manner. Accordingly, he determined to have vengeance, and remained till daylight in an attitude of deep thought.
III
The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not b
ck. That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.
Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.
Jack. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.
Algernon. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.
Jack. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.
Algernon. My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about. [The sound of an electric bell is heard.] Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner. Now, if I get her out of the way for ten minutes, so that you can have an opportunity for proposing to Gwendolen, may I dine with you to-night at Wi
a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he--doesn't do anything--oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, and we became friends at once."
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is, Harry," he murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. "Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I ch
Description
Early in his literary career Oscar Wilde published two collections of children’s stories and fairy tales. This edition contains the stories from both The Happy Prince and Other Tales, published in 1888, and A House of Pomegranates, published in 1891. The two books present two slightly different sensibilities, and though stories like “The Happy Prince” and “The Selfish Giant” have grown into timeless children’s classics, the darker tales told in A House of Pomegranates remain less well known and were, as Wilde said, “intended neither for the British child nor the British public.”
While Wilde is best known as a playwright and celebrated for his wit and aphorisms, his early writings contain the seeds of his biting criticism of late Victorian society. And this was true no more so than in these fairy stories which explore the ideals of friendship, love, kindness and charity; the stories both celebrate these attributes and show how they are too often twisted or ignored by the very societies that espouse them.