Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for homosexuality, imprisonment, and early death at age 46.

Works

Essays

• The Decay of Lying First published in Nineteenth Century (1889), republished in Intentions (1891).
• Pen, Pencil and Poison First published in the Fortnightly Review (1889), republished in Intentions (1891).
• The Soul of Man under Socialism First published in the Fortnightly Review (1891), republished in The Soul of Man (1895), privately printed.
• Intentions (1891) Wilde revised his dialogues on aesthetic subjects for publication in this volume, which comprises:
  • The Critic as Artist
  • The Decay of Lying
  • Pen, Pencil and Poison
  • The Truth of Masks
• "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (First published in the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon, December 1894) 
• "A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated" First published, anonymously, in the 1894 November 17 issue of Saturday Review.

Fiction

Novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891). The first version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was published, in a form highly edited by the magazine, as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine.^[3] Wilde published the longer and revised version in book form in 1891, with an added preface.

Stories

• The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889)
• The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888, a collection of fairy tales) consisting of:
• The Happy Prince
• The Nightingale and the Rose
• The Selfish Giant
• The Devoted Friend
• The Remarkable Rocket
• A House of Pomegranates (1891, fairy tales)
• Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891) Including "The Canterville Ghost" first published in periodical form in 1887.
• Complete Short Fiction. Penguin Classics, 2003. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Ian Small. Contains all works listed above plus Poems in Prose (1894) and one very short 'Elder-tree' (fragment).

Poems

• Ravenna (1878) Winner of the Newdigate Prize.
• Poems (1881) Wilde's collection of poetry and first publication.
• The Sphinx (1894)
• Poems in Prose (1894)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Plays

• Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)
• The Duchess of Padua (1883)
• Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
• A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• Salomé (French version) (1893, first performed in Paris 1896)
• Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act: Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley (1894)
• An Ideal Husband (1895) (text)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) (text)
• La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy Fragmentary. First published 1908 in Methuen's Collected Works.
• The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. Penguin Classics, 2000. Edited with an Introduction, Commentaries and Notes by Richard Allen Cave. Contains all from above save the first two. Salome is in English. As an appendix there is one excised scene from The Importance of Being Earnest.