Product Description

A unique one-volume anthology which includes all of Wilde's stories, plays, and poems. It also features a large portion of his essays and letters and an introduction by Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80427 in Books
• Published on: 1989-09-27
• Released on: 1989-09-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1216 pages

Review
`This new edition has all the expertise one expects of sucha volume.' Contemporary Review March 2001

About the Author

Born in Ireland in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

The Picture Of Dorian Gray

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of' Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs ; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry, languidly. " You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place."

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. " No : I won't send it anywhere."

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such

fanciful whirls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette. " Not send it anywhere ? My dear fellow, why ? Have you any reason ? What odd chaps you painters are ! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, " but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it."

Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.

"Yes, I knew you would ; but it is quite true, all the same."

"Too much of yourself in it ! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain ; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young

Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you-well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he a-ways looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter yourself, Basil : you are not in the least like him."

"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. " O course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders ? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.

Customer Reviews

Collectable
Not practical book to carry and to read it while outside, but it is just the way how ALL-IN-ONE book is...However, good to have all his works together...

Magnificent!
I wish there was some way to make this large tome more compact, because (if it were possible) I would probably carry it around with me wherever I went! I originally became familiar with his work because Carl Barat and Pete Doherty (band members of The Libertines, a fantastic British band) had mentioned him amongst their favourite authors. I decided to read "The Picture of Dorian Gray". I liked so much that I decided to buy the whole collection of Wilde's plays, poems, and stories.

Perhaps I am biased because I particularly enjoy literature from the 1800s (Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Edwin A. Abbott), though I must admit that I haven't come across anything similar to Oscar Wilde's work before. Wilde's profound ability of creating rich, imaginative dialogue is especially evident in his plays and his one novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Many of his plays, especially The Importance of Being Earnest, are too fantastic, too purely Victorian in nature to be imaginable as happening in real life. However, I think that it is the underlying fanciful, almost surrealistic quality of much of his stories and poems that make them most interesting. The sheer amount of quotable phrases found in his work is something to really be marvelled at. Not only the dialogue, but the quality of the plot is brilliant as well. "The Picture of Dorian Gray", a tale of a handsome youth's descent into madness and debauchery, is particularly striking. It makes me wonder what other stories Wilde could have produced if his life had not been so tragically short (1854-1900).

Though he might be more well-known for his plays and novel, his first published material was poetry. His poetry, as does his other work, embodies his ideals of aesthetics: "art for art's sake". The articulate, minute description of details which might go unnoticed or seen as obsolete matter a great deal in the aesthetic philosophy, as does the beautification of objects and art in everyday life. Wilde even had a tour of lectures on the aesthetic movement in the United States and Canada in 1882, though his philosophy wasn't well-received by the majority of critics.

Wilde had said that "The House of Pomegranates", one of his collections of fairy-tales, was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public". This is believable to an extent, because the majority of Wilde's material seems to be encompassed in a world of his own. He was incredibly proficient at putting down onto paper the very heart and soul of what he was trying to convey, which eventually contributed to getting him into trouble later on. The "The Picture of Dorian Gray" became notorious amongst critics as being a "corrupt" and "unclean" work, chiefly due to the apparently "sinful" nature of Dorian Gray and his misadventures.

This collection is 1000+ pages in length, though it didn't take me a considerably long time to read because I found the bulk of it incredibly interesting and well-written. Even for those who have read some of his work before (any poems, stories, essays, and/or letters), and especially for those who haven't...get this book! You will not regret for a moment the decision to delve further into the literature of one of the greatest authors that I know of.

no dates
This is a very well priced volume. It lacks any notation as to the source or dates of all the texts. In fact, the copyright doesn't even tell you when this volume was published. No named editor. Nevertheless, it's got so much: De Profundis, decay of lying, artist as critic, and then the plays, Dorian, etc. No letters and nothing from trials, but a great volume for the price.