The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde — Bibliomancer edition cover

Free to read online. No account needed.

Fiction · 1899

The Importance of Being Earnest

A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Oscar Wilde

Reading time
about 1.5 h
Length
20,596 words · 48 pages
Structure
3 chapters · 1 front-matter section
Language
English
Era
Victorian

The Importance of Being Earnest, first published in 1899, has been pulled into the Bibliomancer archive: the complete text, carefully cleaned and typeset, free to read online. Its editorial introduction is still being prepared.

Contents

  1. The Persons in the Play
  2. Time and Place
  3. Act I
  4. Act II
  5. Act III

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.

Confirming opens a free account under the terms and privacy policy.

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Open the archive