The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

Product Information

pages, blue cloth; chipped dj Finally taken from the earliest manuscript, it is released to the public for the first time in its entirety, unexpurgated.

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. I love how an author who wrote over 100 years ago can make me laugh out loud; I love that his jabs at Americans are still relevant. I don’t know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives.Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. 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. Before starting this collection I had actually never read anything by Oscar Wilde - I have now read everything by Oscar Wilde, and can officially say I am a massive fan! Wilde’s works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse.It contains his only novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. 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. In 1891, Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed ‘Bosie’, who became both the love of his life and his downfall. Yes, continued Lord Henry, that is one of the great secrets of life—to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.