The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

'It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.'

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) proclaims that it is 'A Trivial Play for Serious People'. In fact, collected here alongside Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Salome (1891, 1894), A Woman of No Importance (1893), and An Ideal Husband (1895), Earnest shows that the questions raised by Wilde's plays are anything but trivial. Witty and radical, they elegantly challenge Victorian social proprieties, featuring lies, blackmail, illicit desires, seductions, and double lives.

This volume, edited by Kate Hext, positions Wilde's major plays in the context of Wilde's life, career, and late-Victorian culture. Its introduction provides a readable overview with stylistic analyses to help readers understand the plays and why they are still fresh and relevant today, followed by sections on each play which explain key figures, plot devices, and Wilde's evolution as a dramatist.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Oscar Wilde

Kate Hext is an Associate Professor of Decadent Literature and the Arts at the University of Exeter and Visiting Professor of English at Ewha Womans University. Her publications include Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies (OUP), Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy, and, as co-editor, Decadence in the Age of Modernism. She is founding co-editor of the journal Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures.

IntroductionNote on the TextSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Oscar WildeLADY WINDERMERE'S FANSALOMEA WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCEAN IDEAL HUSBANDTHE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNESTAppendix: Illustrations to Salome by Aubrey BeardsleyExplanatory Notes