Nothing . . . Except My Genius: The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde - Couverture souple

Wilde, Oscar

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0141192682 ISBN 13 : 9780141192680

Editeur : Penguin Classics, 2010

Synopsis

'I have nothing to declare,' Wilde once told an American customs official, 'except my genius.' A socialite, a wit, a man who flaunted convention and was unafraid to shock, Oscar Wilde was a great writer and a great man. This new collection of wit and wisdom demonstrates the brilliance of his vision, the audacity of his style. Such is the scope of the material, it brings to life the Wilde of great feeling as well as the Wilde of great art.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He went to Trinity College, Dublin and then to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he began to propagandize the new Aesthetic (or 'Art for Art's Sake') Movement.

Despite winning a first and the Newdigate Prize for Poetry, Wilde failed to obtain an Oxford scholarship, and was forced to earn a living by lecturing and writing for periodicals. After his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he tried to establish himself as a writer, but with little initial success. However, his three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his Society Comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on the West End stage between 1892 and 1895.

Success, however, was short-lived. In 1891 Wilde had met and fallen extravagantly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1895, when his success as a dramatist was at its height, Wilde brought an unsuccessful libel action against Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde lost the case and two trials later was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. As a result of this experience he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He was released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate self-imposed exile on the Continent. He died in Paris in ignominy in 1900.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

Offers a collection of wit and wisdom that demonstrates the author's vision and his style.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Classics
• Date d'édition: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0141192682
• ISBN 13: 9780141192680
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 64
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible