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5.0 out of 5 stars
CONVENIENT, COMPREHENSIVE AND AUTHORITATIVE COLLECTION OF THE WORKS OF OSCAR WILDE WITH INTRODUCTION ETC. BY HIS LEARNED SON, November 28, 2007
For those in any need of Wilde at elbow (and who among us is not?), this thick brick of a book lends itself to easy reference, if, despite its format appelation, far too large a book for the vast majority of pockets.
First collected in 1948 and published in Britian by Collins, I have received the 1989 reprint, a rather substantial tome indeed which presents fairly bare bones the majority of Wilde's work, with some letters. In fact the only thing missing from this "Complete" collection of his writings may be some of his private letters, etc., which have been in fact published elsewhere, as in, for example,
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde which is edited by his grandson Merlin.
Wilde's own son Vyvyan wrote the scholarly biography and academic analysis of his own father's landmark and unequalled work. Anyone already familiar with the life of Oscar Wilde knows how deeply touching this in itself must be. Wilde deeply loved his two sons, and especially his wife, and suffered greatly their loss due to his unjust and cruel and unusual imprisonment on false charges, as witnessed here in his writings Reading Gaol and most explicitly in De Profundis, which might also be read in
The Soul of Man & Prison Writings. De Profundis in this present collection was first published here by Collins completely and most authoritatively.
The nearly cold scholarliness with which this son of Wilde presents the clear facts of his father's life astounds one, and even pains one who knows the fullness of the story, or reads it here for the first time. Please see as well the excellent account in
Son of Oscar Wilde for a more complete understanding of this deeply slandered and actually unknown creator of modern literary style and forms, which we have so lost in this post-modern world. We do well here to study carefully his art in the fullness of its publication, and to read the beauty of his own son's biography. A highly recommendable collection and excellent, well balanced introductory biography, with an equally excellent adjunct chronology and bibliography for further readings and resources.
Read once more Dorian Gray, the novel, and the associated short stories. Themoral tales and fairy tales are here presented, as well as the plays. The Importance of Being Earnest humorously reveals the closet lifestyle of the aristocracy, and the superficiality, unfortunately and necessarily here unannotated. Lady Windemere's Fan with lesser lightness reveals the fatal hypocrisy and fatality of upper crust British society. An Ideal Husband with some degree of humor and intrigue reveals the same, with the a revelation of the stock swindles which were then and which in Halliburton remain the basis for many a great fame and fortune. These three are fairly well represented by the BBC in
The Oscar Wilde Collection (The Importance of Being Earnest / The Picture of Dorian Gray / An Ideal Husband / Lady Windermere's Fan).
This selection of plays continues of course with all of them, including a Woman of No Importance and the standard (and very poor) English translation of Wilde's prophetic play written in French for Sarah Bernhardt Salome, which again reveals the corruption and vice of the ruling classes and their destruction of true religion.
His Poems in Prose are included and various essays and letters including the important De Profundis mentioned above (which he proposed entitling in Latin for his prison and chains), as well as the earlier serio-comic The decay of Lying, A Few Maxims for the INstruction of the Over-Educated, and Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. One wonders the seriousness of his intent in writing The Portrait of Mr. W.H. as the object of Shakespeare's sonnets, and we read with interwst his Soul of Man under Socialism and his The Critic as Artist, etc.
HIs poetry is well and completely represented, including this touching dedication of a book of his poems to his dearly and well beloved wife:
To My Wife
I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
from a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.
For if of these fallen petals
One of you seem fair
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.
And when the wind and winter harden
All the loveles land,
It will whisper of the garden
You will understand.
Wilde though dying young due to his imprisonment and exile and loss of family, survived his wife who suffered as cruelly English unmerciful justice, and this loving couple passed untold and untellable pain, here only hinted at by his son, and by his writing which hopefully will aid us to glimpse the deep and famously paradoxical truth of Mr. Oscar Wilde.
Read the book.
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