The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Selection

by Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (Editor)

Overview

An authoritative edition of Oscar Wilde’s critical writings shows how the renowned dramatist and novelist also transformed the art of commentary.

Though he is primarily acclaimed today for his drama and fiction, Oscar Wilde was also one of the greatest critics of his generation. Annotated and introduced by Wilde scholar Nicholas Frankel, this unique collection reveals Wilde as a writer who transformed criticism, giving the genre new purpose, injecting it with style and wit, and reorienting it toward the kinds of social concerns that still occupy our most engaging cultural commentators.

“Criticism is itself an art,” Wilde wrote, and The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde demonstrates this philosophy in action. Readers will encounter some of Wilde’s most quotable writings, such as “The Decay of Lying,” which famously avers that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates life.” But Frankel also includes lesser-known works like “The American Invasion,” a witty celebration of modern femininity, and “Aristotle at Afternoon Tea,” in which Wilde deftly (and anonymously) carves up his former tutor’s own criticism. The essays, reviews, dialogues, and epigrams collected here cover an astonishing range of themes: literature, of course, but also fashion, politics, masculinity, cuisine, courtship, marriage—the breadth of Victorian England. If today’s critics address such topics as a matter of course, it is because Wilde showed that they could. It is hard to imagine a twenty-first-century criticism without him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674271821
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	12/13/2022
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Frankel has published many books about Oscar Wilde, including Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde, The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde, The Invention of Oscar Wilde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. He is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Date of Birth:

October 16, 1854

Date of Death:

November 30, 1900

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

The Royal School in Enniskillen, Dublin, 1864; Trinity College, Dublin, 1871; Magdalen College, Oxford, England, 1874

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

A Note on the Texts 33

Reviews 39

Mr. Whistler's Ten O'Clock (1885) 41

Dinners and Dishes (1885) 51

A Handbook to Marriage (1885) 56

Great Writers by Little Men (1887) 59

Aristotle At Afternoon Tea (1887) 67

From "A Chinese Sage" (1890) 73

From "Mr. Pater's Last Volume" (1890) 85

Essays and Dialogues 91

From "The Philosophy of Dress" (1885) 93

The American Invasion (1887) 103

The American Man (1887) 113

From "London Models" (1889) 122

From "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1891) 135

From Intentions (1891) 183

From "The Decay of Lying" 184

Pen Pencil and Poison 245

From "The Critic as Artist" 285

From "The Truth of Masks" 313

Letters to the Press 321

From "Woman's Dress" (1884) 323

To Read, or Not to Read (1886) 330

From "Fashions in Dress" (1891) 337

Puppets and Actors (1892) 343

Epigrams and Paradoxes 351

Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) 353

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894) 358

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894) 362

Further Reading 371

Illustration Credits 377

Acknowledgments 379

Index 381

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/29/2022

Frankel (The Invention of Oscar Wilde), an English professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, gathers a remarkable collection of Oscar Wilde’s critical writings. As Frankel notes Wilde’s criticism extends beyond just essays or treatises as he pioneered a style of criticism in forms not typically associated with critical thought, including “the dialogue, the epigram, the personal letter.” Included here are book reviews, letters to the press, dialogues, and excerpts from Intentions (1891), the only book of criticism Wilde published during his lifetime. Wilde minces no words in his review of A Handbook to Marriage, writing that “in spite of its somewhat alarming title this book may be highly recommended to every one,” while of Coleridge by Hall Caine, he quips, “So mediocre is Mr. Caine’s book that even accuracy could not make it better.” But it’s in his striking aphorisms that Wilde shines—combining profundity with cleverness, Wilde declares in “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,” for example, that “the well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.” Frankel adds an impressive amount of historical and social background, highlighting the circumstances under which each included work was composed. Students and scholars of literature will relish these witty, acerbic outings. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

It is refreshing to see Wilde the critic take center stage. This is an astute selection showing the full range of the essays, dialogues, and reviews that helped make Oscar's name, brought together expertly by Nicholas Frankel, whose characteristically insightful introduction is essential reading.

Kate Hext

No, it’s not poetry, but it’s the next best thing: prose that floats along on rhyme and rhythm…Rejoice in a book made up of what one essay calls ‘passages…[of]…pure and perfect beauty.’

The Tablet

A lucid guide to the dissident thought of Oscar Wilde, who attacked the genteel gender norms and philanthropic pieties of imperial Britain. At this moment of cultural crisis in the dwindling humanities, Wilde's eloquent defense of individualism, as well as his celebration of the beauty and power of art, could not be more timely.

Camille Paglia

Wilde was a first-rate critic and an essayist and a thoughtful provocateur years before he became a successful playwright, a scandalous novelist, or a queer icon: he’s still a terrific critic today, with a range wider than almost anyone knows. Here are essays you’ve read if you care about Wilde already (‘The Decay of Lying’) and essays even scholars may not have seen. Here is the impossible socialist, anti-populist radical, anti-Platonic creator of Platonic dialogues, infinitely insatiable individualist, and, of course, ‘The Critic as Artist.’ If you’re like me, you owe it to yourself to return to him and check him out. We shall not see his like again.

Stephanie Burt

This is an absorbing volume for which all Wilde fans should be grateful.

Washington Examiner - D. J. Taylor