This volume contains the works in which Wilde made the most diret statements of his political philosophy and his aesthetic principles. They are drawn from two distinct periods of his life,separated by his prison sentence of 1895. 'The Decay of Lying','The Critic as Artist' and The Soul of Man under Socialism,published between 1889 and 1891, were all written immediately prior to Wilde's great commercial breakthrough with Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892. They outline his position as he stood on the brink of fame and admiration. De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, on the other hand, are products of Wilde's prison experience and reflect a more intimate picture of the author.……

De Profumdis isOscar Wilde"s eloquent and bitter reproach from prison to his lover. Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"). ln an extended letter Wilde accuses Lord Alfred of selfishness, shallowness, parasitism,greed, extravagance, tantrums, pettiness and neglect. He contrasts this behaviour towards him with the selfless devotion of his close friend Robert Ross ("Robbie") who became Wilde"s literary executor, gave the work its title (from the opening of Psalm 130) and who published a shortened versioil of it in 1705.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a deeply moving and characteristically generous poem on the horrors of prison life. It was published anonymously in 1898, signed only "C.3.3", Wilde"s cell nurnbcr in Reading Gaol. Wilde himself, released from his two-year prison sentence in 1807, was at the time living in France on the charity of friends and under the pseudonyrn S,abastian Melmoth.

This collection also includes the essay The Soul of Man under Socialism, Wilde"s most outspoken defence of anarchy, and two of his Platonic dialogues, The Decay of Lying and The Critic as Artist in which he puts forward his provocatively witty ideas about art and the social role of the artist.

INTRODUCTION

FURTHER READING

De Profundis

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

The Decay of Lying

The Critic as Artist

The Soul of Man under Socialism

NOTES

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