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Books : Literature & Fiction : Drama : Playwrights, A-Z : ( W )
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This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader‚s notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.Oscar Wilde’s madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers’ entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a mainstay of the high school curriculum for decades.
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gewndolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack’s ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack’s country home on the same weekend—the "rivals" to fight for Ernest’s undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds—pandemonium breaks loose.
Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!
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A handsome Perennial Classics edition of America's favourite play, Our Town, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
First produced and published in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize–winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners has become an American classic and is Thornton Wider's most renowned and most frequently performed play.
This Perennial Classics edition includes a foreword by Donald Margulies and contains an afterword with documentary material edited by Tappan Wilder.
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`The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.' `. . .in married life three is company and two is none.' Is this play a `unique work of art' as Oscar Wilde believed? Or, as a first-night reviewer claimed in 1895, it `represents nothing, means nothing, is nothing'? This is for you to decide. . . Cambridge Literature is a series of study texts which presents writing in the English-speaking world from the 16th century up to the present day. The series includes novels, drama, short stories, poetry, essays and other types of non-fiction. Each edition has the complete text with an appropriate glossary. The student will find in each volume a helpful introduction and a full section of resource notes encouraging active and imaginative study methods.
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Wilde's works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. He wrote tender fairy stories for children employing all his grace, artistry and wit, of which the best-known is The Happy Prince. Counterpoints to this were his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which shocked and outraged many readers of his day, and his stories for adults which exhibited his fascination with the relations between serene art and decadent life. Wilde took London by storm with his plays, particularly his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. His essays - in particular De Profundis- and his Ballad of Reading Gaol, both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection of the works of one of the most exciting writers of the late nineteenth century.
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In print since 1948, this is a single-volume collection of Oscar Wilde's texts. It contains his only novel, "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters. Illustrated with many photographs, the book includes introductions to each section by Wilde's grandon, Merlin Holoand, Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kibertd and Terence Brown. A comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Oscar Wilde together with a chronological table of his life and work are also included.
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An Audio version of Oscar Wilde's famous play; originally produced by the CBC.
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The text of this Norton Critical Edition of The Importance of Being Earnest is the established three-act version. Originally in four acts, Wilde shortened it to three at the urging of George Alexander, the owner of the St. James Theatre and first actor to play Jack Worthing. The play is accompanied by explanatory annotations and by an appendix of excised portions.
"Backgrounds" includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Joseph Donohue, Regenia Gagnier, and Karl Beckson.
"Reviews and Reactions" collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, among them George Bernard Shaw's famous dissenting view and the American assessment by H. F. "Essays in Criticism" includes six diverse assessments of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Camille Paglia, Christopher Craft, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Peter Raby, and Richard Haslam.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
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Oscar Wilde's brilliant play makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and dazzling humour. It is 1890's England and two young gentlemen are being somewhat limited with the truth. To inject some excitement into their lives, Mr Worthing invents a brother, Earnest, as an excuse to leave his dull country life behind him to pursue the object of his desire, the ravishing Gwendolyn. While across town Algernon Montecrieff decides to take the name Earnest, when visiting Worthing's young ward Cecily. The real fun and confusion begins when the two end up together and their deceptions are in danger of being revealed.
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Wilde's subtle satire of the British hypocrisy of the late 1800s toys with the vulnerability of public figures and the powerful playing card of dirty secrets. An Ideal Husband portrays the delicate balance between righteousness, love, and betrayal, and serves it up with a generous smattering of wit and elegance.
Recently filmed with Rupert Everett, Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore.
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"Lady Windermere's Fan" is Oscar Wilde's classic comedic play set in London in the late 19th century. It is the story of Lady Windermere who becomes jealous of her husband's interest in Mrs. Erlynne. Lady Windermere suspects her husband of infidelity, however unbeknownst to her, Mrs. Erlynne is really Lady Windermere's divorced mother who for the last 20 years was thought to be dead.
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Lord Alfred Douglas' translation of Wilde's great play — originally written in French — with all well-known Beardsley illustrations, including suppressed plates. Features 28 Beardsley illustrations and introduction by Robert Ross.
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A timeless statement about human foibles . . . and human endurance, this beautiful new edition features Wilder's unpublished production notes, diary entries, and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder.
Time magazine called The Skin of Our Teeth "a sort of Hellzapoppin' with brains," as it broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire (among other styles), Thornton Wilder departs from his studied use of nostalgia and sentiment in Our Town to have an Eternal Family narrowly escape one disaster after another, from ancient times to the present. Meet George and Maggie Antrobus (married only 5,000 years); their two children, Gladys and Henry (perfect in every way!); and their maid, Sabina (the ageless vamp) as they overcome ice, flood, and war -- by the skin of their teeth.
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Drawing on such unique sources as Thornton Wilder's unpublished letters, journals, and selections from the extensive annotations Wilder made years later in the margins of the book, Tappan Wilder's Afterword adds a special dimension to the reissue of this internationally acclaimed novel.
The Ides of March, first published in 1948, is a brilliant epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar's Rome. Thornton Wilder called it "a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic." Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history's most magnetic, elusive personalities.
In this inventive narrative, the Caesar of history becomes Caesar the human being. Wilder also resurrects the controversial figures surrounding Caesar -- Cleopatra, Catullus, Cicero, and others. All Rome comes crowding through these pages -- the Rome of villas and slums, beautiful women and brawling youths, spies and assassins.
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Enduring Literature Illuminated by Practical Scholarship Wilde's classic comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest, and his other popular plays -- Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and Salome -- challenged comtemporary notions of sex and sensibility, class and cultural identity.
This Enriched Classic Edition includes:
• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
• A chronology of the author's life and work
• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
• Detailed explanatory notes
• Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience
Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.
Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson
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Three of the greatest plays in American literature collected in one volume
This important new omnibus edition features an illuminating foreword by playwright John Guare and an extensive afterword for each play drawing on unpublished letters and other unique documentary material prepared by Tappan Wilder.
Our Town—Wilder's timeless 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning look at love, death, and destiny is celebrated around the world and performed at least once each day in the United States.
The Skin of our Teeth—Wilder's 1942 romp about human follies and human endurance starring the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1943.
The Matchmaker—Wilder's brilliant 1954 farce about money and love starring that irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. This play inspired the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!.
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Tender, beguiling, suffused with feeling and wit, the remarkable plays of Thornton Wilder occupy a unique place in American culture. His most celebrated play, Our Town, has achieved iconic status as an expression of the spirit and pathos of small-town American life; adapted for the movies and the operatic stage, it continues to resonate with audiences responding to its formal elegance, plainspoken poetry, and moving evocation of the inevitability of loss.Collected Plays & Writings on Theater, the most comprehensive one-volume edition of Wilder's work ever published, takes the measure of his extraordinary career as a dramatist by presenting the complete span of his achievement, beginning with his early expressionist experiments and daring one-act plays such as "The Long Christmas Dinner" and "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden" (one of Wilder's personal favorites), ranging through the full flowering of Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker, and encompassing the intriguing dramatic projects of his later years, such as his adaptation of the ancient story of Alcestis (The Alcestiad) and plays written for dramatic cycles based on the Seven Deadly Sins and the varied ages of an individual's life. Complementing the selection of plays is an illuminating group of essays that captures Wilder's reflections on his plays and contains a revealing epistolary account of the film adaptation of Our Town, as well as evaluations of dramatists such as Sophocles, George Bernard Shaw, and the Austrian satirist Johann Nestroy (whose farce Einen Jux will er sich machen Wilder brilliantly transformed into The Matchmaker).
Collected Plays & Writings on Theater also includes material never before published: scenes from The Emporium, an ambitious unfinished play that, emerging out of Wilder's intense engagement with existentialist philosophy in the postwar years, imagines a Kafkaesque department store whose enigmatic activities are as inscrutable as the mysteries of life itself; and the complete screenplay Wilder wrote for Alfred Hitchcock's film Shadow of a Doubt just before reporting for military service in 1942. Although faithful to the spirit of the film, the screenplay presented here restores Wilder's original dialogue, some of which (to Wilder's dismay) was altered for the movie. A study of family life, youthful illusions, and the desperation of a criminal on the run, the Shadow of a Doubt screenplay is a masterful exhibition of the art of suspense and taut dramatic storytelling, and is an essential part of Wilder's ouevre.
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Oscar Wilde took London by storm with his first comedy, Lady Windermere's Fan. The combination of dazzling wit, subtle social criticism, sumptuous settings and the theme of a guilty secret proved a winner, both here and in his next three plays, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and his undisputed masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. This volume includes all Wilde's plays from his early tragedy Vera to the controversial Salome and the little known fragments, La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy. The edition affords a rare chance to see Wilde's best known work in the context of his entire dramatic output, and to appreciate plays which have hitherto received scant critical attention.
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