The Wit of Oscar Wilde

This volume is a compilation of Oscar Wilde's epigrams, paradoxes, and brief remarks drawn from his comedies, essays, fiction, reviews, and recorded conversation. Entries are typically grouped by subject - society, art, morals, marriage, America, education, fashion - rather than arranged as a continuous argument or a life. The pieces turn on reversal and definition: work and pleasure, sincerity and mask, the uses of idleness. A few longer extracts from the plays and from courtroom testimony sometimes appear beside one-line jokes. The book is an anthology of verbal display, not a biography and not a substitute for the complete works.

Bound in pale blue cloth blocked with designs by Beck in dark blue and silver. Pale blue endleaves. Dark blue slipcase.