An Ideal Husband - Couverture souple

Wilde, Oscar

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1854594605 ISBN 13 : 9781854594600

Editeur : Nick Hern Books, 1999

Synopsis

A subtle satire of the British hypocrisy that allows public figures to conceal private duplicities.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. wikipedia

Présentation de l'éditeur

Number 42 in Nick Hern Book's Drama Classics series, providing great drama at a great price. Includes the full text, plus a short introduction that takes in the life of the playwright, the plot and background, and explores the themes of the play.

Wilde's 1895 comedy revolving around blackmail and political corruption.

Sir Robert Chiltern, a Government minister who built his fortune on a single dishonest act, is blackmailed by Mrs Cheveley, who wants his assistance in another dishonest scheme. Chiltern asks Lord Goring, the ne'er-do-well son of the Earl of Caversham, for advice, and Lord Goring, familiar (in several ways) with Mrs Cheveley, ultimately saves Chiltern's marriage and social position. By doing so, he ironically ends up married.

Edited and introduced by Laurie Wolf.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Nick Hern Books
• Date d'édition: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1854594605
• ISBN 13: 9781854594600
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 106