Oscar Wilde: The Collected Oscar Wilde

• ISBN-13: 9781593083106
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 12/1/2007
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 640

A renowned eccentric, dandy, and man-about-town, Oscar Wilde was foremost a dazzling wit and dramatic genius whose plays, poems, essays, and fiction contain some of the most frequently quoted quips and passages in the English language. 
 This volume features a wide selection of Wilde's literary output, including the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, an immensely popular play filled with satiric epigrams that mercilessly expose Victorian hypocrisy; The Portrait of Mr. W. H., a story proposing that Shakespeare's sonnets were inspired by the poet's love for a young man; The House of Pomegranates, the author's collection of fairy tales; lectures Wilde delivered, first in the United States, where he exhorted his audiences to love beauty and art, and then in England, where he presented his impressions of America; his two major literary-theoretical works, "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist"; and a selection of verse, including his great poem The Ballad of Reading Goal, in which Wilde famously declared that "each man kills the thing he loves."
 A testament to Wilde's incredible versatility, this collection displays his legendary wit, brilliant use of language, and penetrating insight into the human condition.
 
So Oscar Wilde is pretty much one of my favorite playwrights of all time. I mean, The Importance of Being Earnest? Come on. One of the most hilarious plays of all time. He was also incredibly intelligent, albeit Socialist. And did I mention that he went to jail for being gay? So yeah, A+ life story.
 In Barnes and Nobles' classics edition, they compile a rather stellar display of his many works. Starting off with short stories, they segue into poetry, articles, essays, and finally end with a three act version of Earnest. Therefore, you get a great sampling of the many interests of Wilde and the way in which his brain worked.
 Personally, a lot of what he said really resonated with me and what I feel the political and media situation of today. His essay, Critic as Artist, screamed at me about the faultiness of the media. He also spent a lot of time in The Truth of Masks talking about the importance of period-accurate costuming in drama, referring to Shakespeare's copious notes to his performances, making it easy for reproductions to portray the characters as Shakespeare originally intended.
 Wilde, aside from having a great intellectual mind, was also highly creative and wrote beautifully. The collection starts off with eight short stories, my favorite of which was Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, which is written with the same humor and attention to the ridiculous as Earnest. Which is probably why I was so amused. I cracked up laughing just telling the story to my uncle after I read it.
 Overall: A
 Wilde can sometimes become dry and pedantic, which makes his essays occasionally difficult to muddle through. But this is still a great collection, and I highly recommend it. WARNING The House of Pomegranates is actually not included in this volume, not sure why it's in the blurb.