Nonfiction · 1920
Shorter Prose Pieces
Nine short pieces of Wilde's occasional prose. "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" — a page of epigrams written for an Oxford undergraduate magazine in 1894, and read aloud against him in court the following year — opens the volume. Then the journalism: a notice of Lillie Langtry's American stage debut as Hester Grazebrook; four pieces on dress, in which Wilde argues that women's clothing should hang from the shoulders and that fashion is a form of servitude; "The American Invasion", on the American girl in London society; and "Sermons in Stones at Bloomsbury", on the Greek marbles. "L'Envoi", an introduction written for another poet's book, closes it with a statement of what the new aesthetic school thought it was doing.
The pieces date from the 1880s and 1890s, when Wilde was reviewing and editing for a living, and were gathered into the collected editions after his death.
This Bibliomancer edition presents all nine pieces complete.
Contents
New editions
Never lose your place.
This book is free to read in full, and stays that way. Leave an address: one click confirms it and opens a free account, so your progress and bookmarks sync across every device. You'll also hear when the next restored edition enters the archive. Terminate at any time.
Subjects
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Source mind
About the author
1854–1900 · Victorian
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Dublin, studied at Trinity College and at Oxford, and became the most celebrated wit of late-Victorian London. The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890–91), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest (both 1895) made his reputation. In 1895 he was convicted of gross indecency and served two years’ hard labour; De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol came out of the experience. He died in Paris.
Adjacent records
