In addition to Wilde’s five major plays, this Signet Classics edition contains:
• Two interviews with the playwright at the peak of his career, in which Wilde discusses his work—and his critics
• Some of his most brilliant critical writing, in which he discusses the nature of art in terms that anticipate much of today’s literary theory
• An appendix that restores valuable lines that appeared in the original text of The Importance of Being Earnest
With an Introduction by Sylvan Barnet
and a New Afterword by Marylu Hill
Sylvan Barnet, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, is professor of English at Tufts University, specializing in English drama. He is the General Editor of the Signet Classic Shakespeare series and the author or coauthor of many books, including Types of Drama, 8th edition, and An Introduction to Literature, 13th edition.
Marylu Hill is the Director of the Center for Liberal Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Mothering Modernity: Feminism, Modernism, and the Maternal Muse (1999), and coeditor (with Paul Kerry) of Thomas Carlyle Resartus (2010). She has published numerous essays on Victorian subjects, including Thomas Carlyle, Christina Rossetti, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Her current book project is on Oscar Wilde and Platonic dialogue.