在线阅读本书 While jailed for homosexual offenses, Wilde wrote this long, bitter letter of recrimination to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. It offers fascinating insights into Wilde's life in prison and the background and psychology of a notorious affair, but its eloquence, passion and literary excellence make it a universal statement about love, injustice and suffering.

Oscar Wilde was at once a family man and a homosexual outsider, a socialite, socialist, and Irish nationalist. His contradictions inspired him to ponder the roles and masks donned in conventional society, and his acute and wry insights are wonderfully displayed in this collection of his essential plays. Known not only for his brilliant, epigrammatic language, but also for his sense of theatrical design, color, and staging, Wilde created an enduring body of finely crafted works, whose delights and ironies still speak to modern audiences. In addition to Lady Windermere's Fan , Salomé , A Woman of No Importance , An Ideal Husband , A Florentine Tragedy , and The Importance of Being Earnest , this edition contains an introduction, notes and commentaries, and an excised scene from The Importance of Being Earnest .

Oscar Wilde's brilliant play makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and dazzling humour. It is 1890's England and two young gentlemen are being somewhat limited with the truth. To inject some excitement into their lives, Mr Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, as an excuse to leave his dull country life behind him to pursue the object of his desire, the ravishing Gwendolyn. While across town Algernon Montecrieff decides to take the name Earnest, when visiting Worthing's young ward Cecily. The real fun and confusion begins when the two end up together and their deceptions are in danger of being revealed.