Description
Lady Windermere's Fan/Salome/A Woman of No Importance/An Ideal Husband/A Florentine Tragedy/The Importance of Being Earnest
'To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness'
The Importance of Being Earnest is a glorious comedy of mistaken identity, which ridicules codes of propriety and etiquette. Snobbery and hypocrisy are also laid bare in Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband, while in Salome and A Florentine Tragedy, Wilde uses historical settings to explore the complex relationship between sex and power. The range of these plays displays Wilde's delight in artifice, masks and disguises, and reveals the pretensions of the social world in which he himself played such a dazzling and precarious part.
Edited with Introduction, Commentaries and Notes by Richard Allen Cave
This reissue is designed to tie-in with the film version of "The Importance of Being Earnest" to be released nationwide from 30th August 2002. The film stars Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Judi Dench and Reese Witherspoon.
About the Author
Born in Ireland, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was educated in Dublin & Oxford and went on to become the leading and most prominent exponent of flamboyant aestheticism. As well as his many plays, he wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and published several volumes of poetry and criticism. He was imprisoned in 1895 for homosexual offences and after his release he died in exile in Paris. Richard Cave has edited a selection of Yeats' plays for Penguin Classics.
Book Information
ISBN 9780140436068
Author Oscar Wilde
Format Paperback
Page Count 464
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 320g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 24mm
