Revising Wilde Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde

A radical re-examination of Oscar Wilde's plays, Revising Wilde challenges long-established views of the writer as a dilettante and dandy. Instead Wilde emerges as a serious philosopher and social critic who used his plays to subvert the traditional values of Victorian literature and society. Sos Eltis traces Wilde's painstaking revisions and redrafting of his plays, and uncovers Wilde's subtle methods of lampooning his conventional sources. In the process Eltis discovers, concealed in successive versions, Wilde the anarchist, the socialist, and the feminist. Taking into account the most recent scholarship and criticism, this accessible study will be of interest to Wilde specialists and enthusiasts alike.

Sos Eltis is Lecturer in English at St. John's College, University of Oxford.