内容简介
Flamboyant and controversial, Oscar Wilde was a dazzling
personality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparkling
comedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written
for the English stage. Here in one volume are his immensely popular
novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; his last literary work, “The
Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a product of his own prison experience;
and four complete plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, his first dramatic
success, An Ideal Husband, which pokes fun at conventional
morality, The Importance of Being Earnest, his finest comedy, and
Salomé, a portrait of uncontrollable love originally written in
French and faithfully translated by Richard Ellmann.
Every selection appears in its entirety–a marvelous collection of
outstanding works by the incomparable Oscar Wilde, who’s been aptly
called “a lord of language” by Max Beerbohm.
作者简介
Oscar Wilde was born into a socially prominent Anglo-Irish
family in Dublin in 1854. A gifted student, he entered Oxford in
1874, where he fell under the aesthetic influence of Walter Pater
and John Ruskin. He was soon well known as a dandy, wit, and
man-about-town, but married in 1884. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY was
published in 1891, as was his essay, "The Soul of Man Under
Socialism," but he found critical and popular sucess in the theater
with his comedies: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman
of No Importance (1892) An Ideal Husband (1895), and
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). In 1895, the
Marquess of Queensberry sought to end the close relationship
between his son, Lord Alfred Douglas, and Wilde, publicly referring
to Wilde as a homosexual. After losing a lawsuit against the
Marquess for libel, Wilde was arrested and served two years of hard
labor at Reading and Pentonville prisons. Wilde was deserted by his
wife and friends and upon his release in 1897, he moved to France
under an assumed name, where he finished writing "The Ballad of
Reading Gaol," and traveled to Italy with Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde died suddenly in Paris in November of 1900.