Publisher's Synopsis
This volume of the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the first volume of Wilde's journalism. Throughout the 1880s Oscar Wilde devoted the greater part of his creative energies to working as a professional journalist and he was prepared to write on a remarkable range of topics - from cookery books to lyric poetry, from classical translations to three-volume novels, from dress reform to transatlantic visitors. He also reviewed theatrical productions and art exhibitions of many kinds. Between 1887 and 1889 he edited the pioneering Woman's World magazine to which he contributed lengthy columns discussing literary and other matters of interest to an educated female readership. This is the first comprehensive edition of Wilde's journalism since 1908. It includes all of his known contributions, both signed and anonymous, to periodicals and newspapers. Of the more than 150 items - reviews, articles, editorials - a significant number have been identified for the first time, while the authenticity of others previously thought to be by Wilde is questioned. An extensive commentary offers the sources for Wilde's extraordinary cultural knowledge and provides cross-references to his oeuvre as whole. In the case of the book reviews, the commentary indicates relevant pages and passages in the works under discussion. Uniquely witty, intellectually acute, and socially aware Wilde's journalism not only displays the extensive reading and stylistic experimentation that prepared the way for his major works of the 1890s, it provides an essential record of the vibrant and rapidly changing journalistic culture in which he played a major part.
