Oscar Wilde wrote some of the most brilliantly crafted, witty plays of all time. Get this book and read everything in it! You're really missing out if you haven't read any of his work. His humor is so wicked and will have you cackling evilly at the genius of his dialogue. "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" is also one of the most unforgettable and captivating stories I've ever read. Highly recommended.

Oscar Wilde is one of my very favorite writers. He wrote some very interesting stories such as "The Picture of Dorian Gray". He also wrote very good dialogue. I place him second only to Shakespeare where the dialogue is concerned. Wilde also created well-developed and intriguing characters. I would highly recommend his works.

Whoa! I was totally unfamiliar with the works of Oscar Wilde, until I bought this one on a friend's recommendation. It's huuuuuge, yet incredibly beautiful. Dorian Gray must be one of the greatest stories ever told, his poems are razor-sharp, his letters not less, and every line he comes up with is quotable. If you want to make sure you don't miss a thing, this is the book to get (and try his biography, especially the part about the trial).

In modern times, it is easy to overlook the contribution made to our heritage by Oscar Wilde. This book goes some way to redressing the balance as it conjures up the wicked wit of Wilde, in a very presentable fashion. Not a book to be read from cover to cover but one to be dipped into very often.

Has a great definition for every thinkable literary term. A must have for any English student

Almost all of the authors collected here drank deeply of French influence, and wrote under the colossal shadow of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarme. Those expecting something equal to those masters will be disappointed.

Some of them came close. E.g. Theodore Wratislaw:

I love you for the grief that lurks within
Your languid spirit, and because you wear
Corruption with a vague and childish air
And with your beauty know the depths of sin; . . .

not bad verse, until some spoilsport points out that all Wratislaw has done here is to make a sonnet out of Pater's observations on the Mona Lisa. And then again, some of these authors fall flat on their face, like Richard LeGallienne, who makes 'Beauty Accurst' say:

The sleepy kine move round me in desire
And press their oozy lips upon my hair,
Toads kiss my feet and creatures of the mire,
The snails will leave their shells to watch me there

lines that surely belong in the -Stuffed Owl Anthology-.

But of course, none of this is the fault of the learned editor who collected all of this neglected Yellow Book material, and who has expanded the helpful introduction and bibliography from the first edition. There is much worth reading here: Aubrey Beardsley's hilarious dedication of his erotic novella -Under the Hill- to a fictitious cardinal of the Roman church; the poems of Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons; and of course, the -Ballad of Reading Gaol- and -Salomé-.