Selected Poems

Wilde Oscar

The life and works of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) have a perennial fascination for the theatre-going and reading public, and it is surprising that no separate edition of the poetry has been published for decades. Malcolm Hicks provides a generous and timely selection, introduction and notes. Here is the brilliant twenty-six-year-old's only collection of poems, which displays his sensuousness and technical precocity, with deft echoes of earlier masters. The young Wilde explores styles and forms to counteract what seemed to him the exhaustion of the poetic language current at the time. The substantial works of his later maturity – including "The Harlot's House", "The Sphynx" and the legendary "Ballad of Reading Gaol" – are also included.

About the Author

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 and became one of the most celebrated dramatists of the nineteenth century, as well as a distinguished novelist and poet. He was born in Dublin and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalene College, Oxford, where he won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his long poem, Ravenna. His most important works include "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891), "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892), "A Woman of No Importance" (1893), "An Ideal Husband" (1895) and "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). He died in 1900.

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