Complete and unabridged paperback edition. A letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to Lord Alfred Douglas. First published in 1905....
"When I was alive and had a human heart," answered the statue, "I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans–Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see...
First performed in 1895, “An Ideal Husband” is Oscar Wilde’s classic and much-loved comedic drama. The play tells the story of an up-and-coming politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, who tries to hide his secret past from his judgmental wife and the blackmail scheme he is forced to participate in to keep that secret quiet. Lady Chiltern has a very particular idea of what makes the “ideal husband” which leaves her with little tolerance for Sir Robert’s all too human shortcomings and compromises. With his biting wit and brilliant powers of observation, Wilde highlights the moral ambiguity of...
This secular comedy has a lot of witty salon chatter, spectacular aphorisms and paradoxes, it showed in all its splendor the art of Wilde as the most intelligent interlocutor: his dialogues are magnificent. Newspapers called him "the best of modern playwrights," noting the mind, originality, perfection of style. The sharpness of thoughts, the refinement of paradoxes are so admiring that the reader is intoxicated by them throughout the duration of the play....
The Chiltern family seems perfect. He is a successful politician, she is a virtuous wife. But even ideal people have their secrets in the closet, and with the advent of the mysterious lady, this secret can become known to everyone. Oscar Wilde reflects on the possibility of an absolutely honest politician....
The collection "The Happy Prince and Other Tales" by Oscar Wilde, a famous English writer of the 19th century, is a classic example of English prose. The fabulous motives and the “decorative” style of narration conceal the most important moral problems. The fairy tales reflected the aesthetic views of Oscar Wilde on art, the task of which the writer saw the creation of beauty, inaccessible to real life....
Aldzheron and John, two young friends, decide to introduce themselves as Ernest brothers and thus entice ladies (the reason for this is some superstition or prejudice, that Ernest is the only name for a serious man with serious motives). But as they realize that they cannot always fool girls’ heads, they decide to take a desperate step – to be baptized in order to legitimize their "serious" names......
"Mister Utterson, the notary, whose stern face was never lit up with a smile, was a reserved man of few words, socially awkward, lean, dusty, and boring - and yet he was very attractive. In his friends’ circle, especially when drinking the wine that he enjoyed, his eyes started to radiate the soft light of compassion that has no access to his speech. Instead, his compassion spoke not only in these silent places of afternoon complacency but also in his deeds, even more often and louder there. He was strict with himself: when eating dinner alone he drank gin daunting his lust for fine wines,...
Young handsome Dorian Gray arrives to London and drowns into the abyss of vile passions and crimes. A prominent artist paints a portrait of Dorian Gray and the young man falls passionately in love with his own image. Why? Because it would keep the beauty of his youth forever! However, things turn out quite differently and perverse passions leave no trace on the young face of Dorian, instead his portrait changes frightfully with each new crime of his master because Dorian Gray’s soul as it is embodied in the portrait becomes more and more vicious and corrupt......
