The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Selection

Oscar Wilde was a renowned dramatist and novelist who also transformed the art of commentary. This collection of his critical writings, annotated and introduced by Nicholas Frankel, reveals Wilde as a writer who injected style and wit into criticism, reorienting it towards social concerns. The essays, reviews, dialogues, and epigrams cover a wide range of themes, including literature, fashion, politics, masculinity, cuisine, courtship, and marriage, and have had a lasting impact on the field of criticism.

Format: Hardback
Length: 400 pages
Publication date: 27 January 2023
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Though Oscar Wilde is best known for his plays and novels, he was also one of the most influential critics of his time. 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 towards 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 averred 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 tutors' 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.

Though Oscar Wilde is best known for his plays and novels, he was also one of the most influential critics of his time. 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 towards 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 averred 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 tutors' 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.

Dimension: 210 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780674271821