The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde Read online

  —Wilde, as quoted in conversation [OW]

  THE SOURCES OF THE QUOTATIONS

  Plays:

  An Ideal Husband (1895)

  The Importance of Being Earnest (1899)

  Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)

  Salomé (1894)

  Vera (1880)

  A Woman of No Importance (1893)

  Fiction:

  “The Nightingale and the Rose” (1888)

  The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

  “The Portrait of Mr. W H.” (1889)

  “The Remarkable Rocket” (1888)

  Essays, Lectures and Articles:

  “The American Invasion” (1887)

  “The American Man” (1887)

  “Balzac in English” (1886)

  “Ben Jonson” (1886)

  “The Butterfly’s Boswell” (1887)

  “A Cheap Edition of a Great Man” (1887)

  “A Chinese Sage” (1890)

  The Critic as Artist (1890)

  “The Decay of Lying” (1891)

  “The English Renaissance of Art” (1882)

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

  “Hamlet at the Lyceum” (1885)

  “A Handbook to Marriage” (1885)

  “Henry the Fourth at Oxford” (1885)

  “Impressions of America” (1885)

  “Lecture to Art Students” (1883)

  “London Models” (1889)

  “Mrs. Langtry as Hester Grazebrook” (1882)

  “Mr. Oscar Wilde on Mr. Oscar Wilde: An Interview” (1895)

  “Mr. Pater’s Last Volume” (1890)

  “Mr. Swinburne’s Last Volume” (1889)

  “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock” (1885)

  “A New Book on Dickens” (1887)

  “A Note on Some Modern Poets” (1888)

  “The New President” (1889)

  “Pen Pencil and Poison” (1891)

  “The Poets and the People” (1887)

  “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young” (1894)

  “The Relation of Dress to Art: A Note in Black and White on Mr. Whistler’s Lecture” (1885)

  “The Rout of the R. A.” (1887)

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (1895)

  “To Read, or Not to Read” (1886)

  Letters:

  De Profundis. (1905; complete, 1949.) New York: Dover Publications, 1996.

  The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1962.

  More Letters of Oscar Wilde. Edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. London: J. Murray, 1985.

  Poetry:

  “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” (1898)

  Conversation:

  Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar Wilde. Edited by John Wyse Jackson. London: Fourth Estate, 1991. [AAT]

  Richard Ellmann. Oscar Wilde. New York: Vintage, 1988. [OW]

  The Portable Oscar Wilde. Edited by Richard Aldington. New York: Viking Press, 1946. [POW]

  The Trials of Oscar Wilde. Edited by H. Montgomery Hyde. New York: Dover Publications, 1973. [TOW]

  www.doverpublications.com