Product Description

The stories gathered in this volume attest to the enormous genius of Oscar Wilde (Dublin, 1854 - Paris, 1900), one of the most fascinating and magnetic figures in English-language literature, a standard-bearer of dandyism, who devoted his life and work to a shared project whose highest aspiration was to cultivate beauty. Throughout his life he was a committed advocate of aestheticism, until his imprisonment, after being convicted of offending public morals, marked the home of his decline. A novelist, poet, literary critic, and playwright, Wilde owes much of his popularity to the only novel he wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
This selection offers a fabulous overview of the Irish writer’s short-story production, almost all of it gathered in the three story collections he published during his lifetime: The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, and A House of Pomegranates.

Book Description

A representative sample of the Irish writer’s enormous talent.

About the Author

A novelist, poet, literary critic, and playwright of Irish origin, a major exponent of aestheticism, Oscar Wilde found success from the outset thanks to the sharp, epigrammatic wit he lavished on his works, which were almost always devoted to castigating his contemporaries. A defender of art for art’s sake, his stories, full of lively dialogue and laden with irony, provoked fierce criticism from conservative sectors, which intensified when Wilde was accused and convicted because of his homosexuality, leading to the decline of his literary career and personal life. Among his works are the four stage comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), The Canterville Ghost, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel.