I bought this book from the author at Kroger grocery store in Atlanta. I followed this sister to her car. After asking if she was available, she said yes, for booksignings and poetry readings. She handed me a book, asked if I would buy one, smiled and said she wasn't available. I couldn't resist, eventhough I didn't believe her GI man was waiting for her in Dunwoody. I'm an Alpha man, so the Egyptians on the cover caught my eye. I bought it and couldn't put it down. This book, like the author, is beautiful, real, raw and funny! You will love it. Although I didn't get a phone number, I got a really great book.(SMILE) To that brother in Miami/Dunwoody whoever, wherever you are, you are lucky. No disrespect, Don't slip, cause somebody will grip. Seriously, the book is nothing but the truth. The words and art send a strong message.

I really enjoyed the poetry of Open Our Eyes. Everything in this book has crossed my mind before or I have discussed it with friends. The author is bold and courageous enough to write about it. This author is a powerful performer. I was able to see her in action in Houston. She is adorable, funny and personable. I felt as if I knew her all of my life. Buy a book for yourself and a friend.

Open Our Eyes is a wonderful book of poetry, filled with many truths about life in general. The author has a gift for telling things like they are, and that's what I loved about her writings the most. Whether you are searching for mediations, inspirations, or affirmations, Ms. Thomas has written something specifically for you.

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.

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).

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.

Not actually a "letter," though it had to be originally presented as such for him to be allowed to write it while in prison, *De Profundis* is Wilde's masterpiece--one has to have really lived and really, really suffered to have written it and it's amazing that he achieved it.

I only very recently read it--and "got" it. It rings true to me, and is very, very moving and "profound." It ain't summer beach reading.

Wilde is still and will probably always be best known as a "Personality"--that and the author of a couple of decent period plays, a short novel, a few stories, and lots of forgettable poems and such. But THIS--THIS is IT.

He really WAS a great writer, it turns out, after all.

One of the most famous - and infamous - letters in all of literature, De Profundis is a strange little piece of work: either much more than it appears on the surface, or much less. It is something I think everyone should read, if only for its insight into the human character, particularly that of one under great personal suffering. Wilde wrote this extraordinarily long letter from prison to Lord Alfred Douglas, his friend, lover, and the man who - by all accounts - was the reason Wilde was in jail in the first place. Despite repeated assertions in the first few pages alone to the contrary, Wilde seems reluctant to blame himself. He clearly blames Douglas to the hilt, and harbors a certain bitter resentment towards him. And yet... he clearly still hold much dear affection toward - and even loves - Douglas. He still seems to be asking for forgiveness - despite the fact that, by all accounts hardly excluding his own, he was the man wronged. It is quite clear from reading this letter that, desite the view history holds of him, Wilde was clearly a man of very high moral character. Certainly, one would not put Wilde atop a pedastal as the zenith of ethics - he himself says that morals contain "absolutely nothing" for him, and clearly admits - and is proud of - his having lived the high life to the hilt during his youth - but Wilde was a man of principles, and he stuck to those principles to the tragic, bitter end. Perhaps you might say he carried them too far. One gets the sense in reading this letter - or a biography of Wilde - that, not only could he have stopped his immiment imprisonment, but could have severed his ties with Douglas completely - had he wanted to. Apparently, he had his own utterly compelling reasons for not doing so. Whatever the case, Oscar Wilde is one of the most fundamentally and perpetually interesting characters in the whole of history. A self-described man of paradoxes - Wilde was subsequently the true essence of his time, while also being far ahead of his time - De Profundis makes for required reading by one of the most endlessly fascinating individuals you'll ever read about, and also provides a startling - indeed, perhaps too much so - insight into human nature.

De Profundis, though long for a letter, is not a long work in the conventional sense. Consequently, as many editions of Wilde's collected works are available, buying this on its own may be deemed questionable. I highly reccommend purchasing a Collected Works of Oscar if you have not done so already - it's well worth the price - but, should you desire to have more compact editions of specific works, an edition such as this will be privy to your needs.

Ah, me...one doesn't know which to be more irritated
and exasperated with: whether it be Walt Whitman doing
his dissembling shuck-and-shuffle about the children
he had sired (to throw off a probing, serious John
Addington Symonds) -- or Oscar, in this "j'accuse," which
he should have spoken while looking in a mirror, rather
than writing it on paper to Lord Alfred.
This is without doubt a fascinating, horrifying,
and yet in places humorous, "piece de Miserere mei"
(to combine a bit of French with Latin).
If one chooses to believe Oscar, his only fault
was weakness in "giving in" to Lord Alfred. Oh,
come now. Blinded by Eros, reason flies out the
door...if ever reason was in control. There are
some sentences which are devastatingly revealing,
but Oscar doesn't seem to see it. "The trivial in
thought and action is charming. I had made it
the keystone of a very brilliant philosophy expressed
in plays and paradoxes." Ye gods, and little fishes!

And this man dared to call himself a "Classicist?!"
Yikes!!!
The best exercise for the reader is to just take
many of the things which Oscar accuses Lord Alfred
of, and turn them toward the self-blind, self-
justifying Oscar, to see their devastating hitting
of the mark. Never having met the young man, but
only having the "benefit" of hearsay (mostly from
Oscar's literary defenders) Lord Alfred seems to have
been calculating, temperamental (using anger to get
his way), manipulative, etc., etc., etc. The best
description of him may be Wilde's referring to him
with the lines from Aeschylus' play AGAMEMNON,
about the lion cub being raised in a house and
being let loose to wreak havoc and ruin.
But Oscar bears his share of blame -- more than just
that of the "sin" of weakness which he constantly falls
back upon in his own justification. Even in the midst
of what purports to be some sort of penitent cry from
the depths of hell...Oscar still is ever the poseur:
"And I remember that afternoon, as I was in the railway
carriage whirling up to Paris, thinking what an impossible,
terrible, utterly wrong state my life had got into, when
I, a man of world-wide reputation, was actually forced
to run away from England, in order to try and get rid
of a friendship that was entirely destructive of everything
fine in me either from the intellectual or ethical point
of view...." Er, when was the last time that the
"everything fine" had last seen the light of day?
Was Oscar an "Artist," as he consistently claims?
Was he the wronged, harmed Artist? Perhaps only the
reader can decide that for himself. Without doubt
he was witty, acerbic, funny, cute, clever, perhaps
even charming (to some -- sort of like a Pillsbury
Dough Boy with flair and a clever tongue), perhaps
stylish (in a frumpy, velveteen sort of way). Was
he wronged by a predatory clinger and manipulator,
and a hypocritical social prudery and class power
play (Oscar is no Socrates--that's for sure!)? He
hardly seems worthy, in some ways, of being a poster-boy
for Gay Pride parades. More likely, he is a better
warning poster boy for the self-excusing, and never
take-responsibility-for-your-own-actions crowd.
But this is an incredible piece to read and think
about. There is some of it that is mordantly hilarious.

In the Colored Garden we are led through a bit of history in the stories Grandma Ruth relates to her Grandson Kenneth or Sarge as he is known. The tales of the slaves and family members lain to rest in a small plot, maintained as a garden, tell us a lot about our collective past, and where we need to be going in our future. I laughed and I cried at these telling stories, more way they were told, and why, than the historical truths they relay. This is a wonderfull book for all generations, colors and creeds. We all have heros like Cakes, Bobbycat, and the Major. We have known the fears life brings us. The author, Oscar Bennett, takes us through the steps of life in one memorable summer. You must read this book, it is a blessing.

This excellent work met all of my expectations. The stories were so vivid that I could see every detail in my imagination. Grandma Ruth was the character who touched me most with her great gift creating beauty in her garden as well as in her storytelling. The author also captured the essence of childhood in the evolution of Sarge. If we all think hard enough, we've all known at least one Sarge in our lives. O.H. Bennett is an author to watch in the future and I look forward to his next publication as well as passing this one along for others to enjoy.

I really enjoyed this book. Parts of it were painful because I related them to my own growing up in the South during the same time period. The main character, Sarge, is a melding of my brother and a couple of his friends and the grandparents in the story evoked memories of my long-dead uncles and aunts. This is a touching story that emphasizes how important it is for families to cherish each other.

As an Aikido "newbie", who joined and left various Aikido Dojos for a few good years now ... I found this book to be an EXCELLENT source about Aikido. It covers EVERYTHING new students would want to know, plus ALMOST everything a veteran would like to know (Aikido, after all, has a LOT of variations and moves..). It covers the philosophy of Aikido, the History of Aikido, the etiquette of Aikido, and of course, the Art itself. The whole book is full with -lovely- illustrations that are great to look at, especially at all the techniques covered in this book.

Anyhow, I've done some research before purchasing this book, and I firmly believe this is one of the greatest, if not the best, books you can read about Aikido.

WestBrook and Ratti cover all throws taught in Aikido up to black belt level. There are full walkthroughs of all projections and immobilizations in the book, and modifications to them. There is also a section on the jo - short staff - that includes a kata for you to practice. Unlike other books, Westbrook and Ratti cover smaller, but some of the more important, aspects of aikido, including start positions (kneeling, crouched, standing, etc.), etiquitte, hand-to-weapons defense, history, ki development, ki usage, philosophy, and so much more. I have been in martial arts for well over a decade, and this is by far the finest literature on aikido I have ever seen. Complete with pictures, walkthroughs, philosophy and the like, Aidkido and the Dynamic Sphere is on par with "Secrets of the Samurai" (same authors). Both are absolutely fantastic and comprehensive.

I used this book often when I was living in Japan and studying Aikido. My sensei emphasized the spiritual / philosophical aspects of Aikido more than other sensei I have studied under; those explanations and concepts can be somewhat esoteric even for native Japanese, so while I was at a linguistic disadvantage compared to the other students, this book gave me a good, broad overview of the mental / spiritual underpinnings of Aikido as a whole, so that I was not completely lost during his discussions. The artwork which is used to illustrate the many basic techniques is not complicated by any means; but it is perfectly suited to its purpose: to as clearly as possible show correct form and technique. I used this book for review purposes before a promotion test, or just to try and figure out what I was doing incorrectly or how I could improve. I wouldn't recommend using this or any other book in lieu of actual real training, but this book is an excellent supplement.

This is the definitive "text book" for the subject of rocket propulsion. Its coverage of the subject is both broad and detailed. Probably a third of the book can be understood with no more than high school level physics and mathematics. The remainder requires some exposure to undergraduate level mechanical engineering, mathematics and physics, e.g. integral calculus, thermodynamics, etc. This book is in its 7th edition and it shows. The authors have a clean, precise, almost mechanical writing style that you would expect in a highly evolved technical work of this type. I do have one minor bone to pick with this book. The authors have clearly spent their lives doing rocketry in the mega million dollar world of NASA, General Dynamics, etc. Most of the graphs and diagrams emphasis big, big, rockets, e.g. graphs focusing on thrust chambers that operate at 5000 p.s.i. I suspect that most readers are either university students or individuals involved in experimental rocketry. Those that fall into the later category might benefit from better coverage of rocketry done with less exotic materials, fuels, and operating parameters. That minor weakness aside, this book covers in its 700 or so pages, everything that has been learned in the field of rocketry in the last 70 years and it presents this material at a fairly detailed technical level. It is therefore the book against which all others in the field will be judged.

The seventh edition of this book is absolutely amazing!!! It presents the material in a clear and concise manner without losing the reader. This book provides up to date information about every type of rocket propulsion system from solids and liquids, to hybrids and exotics. It also includes sections on design and trade studies for different systems. Of particular interest to me were the sections on hybrid propulsion and liquid engine injector design. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in rocket propulsion design and analysis! 5 stars indeed!!!!!

It is always a pleasure to find a comprehensive overview of a field that can be understood by a non-specialist. I cannot testify as to how useful Rocket Propulsion Elements would be to an aerospace engineer, but for a technically inclined amateur like me it is a wonderful book. One of the things I like best about it is that it mixes theory with practical examples. It give a clear idea not only of the principles of rocket propulsion ,but also of the current state of the art. I was expecting this for the field of chemical rocketry, but I was delighted to find explanations of more obscure technologies, such as electric rocket of various types. I only wish that there were books this good in every field.

Being an adaptation by and with the great Martin Jarvis, I thought it would be absolutely excellent, as I have found his audio efforts to be always. But in his performance there is something lacking, Sir Robert Chiltern should be played with a bit more pathos. Jacqueline Bisset is formidable, and Alfred Molina also as Lord Goring.

As to being a live recording, this is a mixed blessing. This public seems to misunderstand some lines, and there are misplaced laughs, for example when Robert Chiltern says: "I did not sell myself for money. I bought success at a great price. That is all". I'm sure Wilde didn't intend this to be a joke. Chiltern is not bought, he is not changed, it is he who buys something, therefore his character, his person, is not altered. The public dismisses this important nuance and bursts into a hearty fit of laughter.

There are three o four more like that. But on the whole, this recording by L.A. Theater Works is highly enjoyable.

Oscar Wilde gives us here one of his best plays. He explores the political world in London and how a young ambitious but poor man can commit a crime, which is a mistake, to start his good fortune. But he builds his political career on ethical principles. Sooner or later someone will come into the picture to blackmail him into supporting an unacceptable scheme, by producing a document that could ruin his career if revealed. His past mistake may come back heavily onto him. But he resists and sticks to his moral reputation. He prefers doing what is right to yielding to some menace. He may lose though his political ambition and career and his wife's love. But love is saved by forgiveness and the man's career is also saved by the work of a real friend who recaptures the dubious document and destroys it. In other words love and an ethical career are saved by the burrying of the old mistake into oblivion. In other words love and friendship are stronger than the scheming action of a blackmailer. This is a terrible criticism of victorian society which is based more on appearances than principles and yet able to destroy a man's absolutely ethical present life with a mistake from his youth, throwing the baby along with the water of the bath. It is also a criticism of the victorian political world where you cannot have a career if you are not rich, money appearing as the only way to succeed, at least to succeed fast. But it is a hopeful play because love and friendship are beyond such considerations and only consider the best interest of men and women, in the long run and in the name of absolute purity. Better be a sinner and be forgiven when you have reformed than see a reformed sinner destroyed by the lack of forgiveness. Oscar Wilde advocates here a vision of humanity that necessitates forgiveness as the essential fuel of any rational approach. Real morality is not the everlasting guilt of a sinner without any possible reform. Real morality is the recognition that forgiveness is necessary when reform has taken place. Otherwise society would be unlivable and based on hypocrisy and the death or rejection of the best people in the name of (reformed) mistakes. One must not be that sectarian, because man can learn from his mistakes and improve along the road : one can learn how to avoid mistakes and repair those oen has committed. If condemnation is absolute, no progress is possible. A very fascinating play, a very modern play. And yet when can one be considered as reformed, when can we consider one has really corrected one's mistakes and improved ? And who can deem such elements ? The very core of political and ethical rectitude is concerned here and Oscar Wilde embraces a generous approach.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

Wilde, in part, attempts to portray the relativity of truth, power, and character, things we often take as absolutes, while also entertaining his audience with witty dialogue and comical mishaps.

With this volume, Richard Ellmann elevates Oscar Wilde into the select circle of Ireland's other literary giants of whom he wrote so eloquently: William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. (It was left to Michael Holroyd to give George Bernard Shaw his due.) While this volume is a sophisticated, wide-ranging, scholarly biography, it also brims with Wilde's wit and bold life, which, as Oscar himself pointed out, was where his genius lay. The slow, steady accumulation of detail, allusion and anecdote pays off as Wilde reaches his pinnacle--the original production of "The Importance of Being Earnest"--only to plunge into the abyss of imprisonment. As Wilde tempts fate with rough trade dalliances and his ill-conceived challenge to the Marquess of Queensbury, you find yourself almost shouting out for him to stop and save himself. But he doesn't, because Ellmann makes us understand that Wilde's nature led him to that point. The end is sad, but his wit never deserts him, right up until his death throes when he notes that either the wallpaper in the room must go or he must--which he does shortly thereafter. Today, qualities that Wilde pioneered are a part of modern life: camp humor, scathing put-downs, an emphasis on style, an obsession with appearances. In Wilde's day, he was an almost solitary figure in that regard, leading the way into the modern world. The witticisms of "The Importance of Being Earnest" are as humorous and apt today as the day they were first spoken in London in 1895. Richard Ellmann helps us understand why.

If Richard Ellmann had not already written the definitive literary biography (his astonishing JAMES JOYCE), this utterly first-rate biography would be a legitimate candidate for the title. One might initially think that Wilde would be an easy subject for a biography: his life was interesting, eventful, literarily significant, triumphant, and tragic. But the problem is that for many Wilde has become a symbol either of the late 19th century Victorian decadence or the oppressed homosexual. To treat anyone, and especially Wilde, primarily as a symbol or a representative of anything outside himself, is to distort and misrepresent. The genius of Ellmann's biography of Wilde is that Wilde never becomes either more or less than the writer and person Oscar Wilde.

The portrait that emerges of Wilde is absolutely fascinating. If Ellmann's JAMES JOYCE is the greater biography, Wilde emerges nonetheless as the more interesting of the two Irish authors, and perhaps the more brilliant, if not the more productive. Indeed, one of the things that emerges from Ellmann's book is a sense that Wilde might have become a greater writer than he did, and not just if he had not sued the Marquess of Queensbury and had not been sent to prison on sodomy charges. Wilde emerges as even more brilliant than the work he produced, as if he had produced much of his work with a minimum of reference.

Ellmann does a marvelous job of situation Wilde in his time and place, with the cultural and artistic concerns paramount at the time. He also does a fair and just job of depicting the major involvements in his life, beginning with Whistler and his wife Constance and continuing on with his various involvements, especially with Alfred Lord Douglas. With the latter, Ellmann certainly does not try to idealize the relationship, but recounts it warts and all. If there is a villain in the book, it is not, surprisingly, the Marquess of Queensbury, but his son Lord Douglas.

The saddest part of the book, by far, is the section recounting Wilde's life after leaving prison, which is one disappointment after another. He first intended to reunite and reconcile with his wife, but she unexpectedly died, thereby cutting himself off from both a family and his children. He then reunites uncomfortably with Lord Douglas, but the attempt is a disaster. He final year or two are recounted as being especially miserable, with an impoverished Wilde reduced to conversing entertainingly with strangers for the benefit of a drink. It is especially heartbreaking to read how almost all his former friends cut him off, refusing to help him in his time of greatest need. An encounter with a young man from Arkansas provides perhaps the most apt Wilde quote from his last days. Upon hearing about Arkansas, Wilde remarked, "I would like to flee like a wounded hart into Arkansas."

One learns a vast amount of fascinating biographical detail about Wilde's life from this book. For instance: Wilde was double-jointed, could speed read and knock off books in scarcely more than a half hour in some instances. He was acquainted with the Yeats family in Ireland, and spoke with a pronounced Irish accent until he went to Oxford. He bought Thomas Carlyle's writing desk. He was a Mason. Physically he had tiny feet and teeth that were darkened by mercury treatments. And there is much, much more.

On nearly every level, this is a truly great biography. Even if one is not a fan of Wilde's works, it is definitely worth reading.

Richard Ellmann obviously knew just about everything there was to know about Oscar Wilde; what is amazing is that he was able to put most of it in his Wilde biography and still make it a graceful, engrossing read completely free of boredom or didacticism. Wilde was one of the truly great personalities of all time, and Ellmann not only brings him to vivid life, but demonstrates why he was one of the most important literary figures of the 19th century.

This book brings to life the hard, gritty and dangerous life of working on the railroad. While there's a ton of romaniticized railroad books, this one give the reader insights of what the working stiff had to endure. It does it, however, with an obvious love of railroading, and of the man the book is about.

"Set Up Running" is not a book of dry statistics of Pennsy RR trackage, assets, debits, or passenger-miles served. Neither is it a sensational narrative of harrowing accidents, up-set locomotives, or exploded boilers (although O.P. does have a few close scrapes, and the line of rail jacks exploding one after another as his massive 2-10-0 freight locomotive thunders down a track under repair sets the reader on the edge of his chair). No, this book is better than those sorts of books because it brings a man--actually two men--to life. We come to know O. P. Orr very well indeed through the eyes of his son, the author, John W. Orr, and we end up knowing John as well.

This book shows American history as it should be written--giant machines moving the citizens and the commerce of the land, a huge railroad corporation with all the bureaucratic "snafus" of any multi-layered business as those snafus are seen by and sometimes affect the career of an engineman, the impact of the Great Depression on one family as typical of America as any could be. Historical facts are all here, but they are facts as seen by two very real, very human people, a father and a son. Were all history books written so well, we would all understand history far better and read it far more willingly.

My own grandfather was an engineman, through his road was the Frisco rather than the Pennsy, and my own father was a great lover of trains, though his career paths took him in a different direction. I came along late in my father's life, and, by the time I had the ability and the leisure to write about him, he was gone and his history with him. "Set Up Running" is the type of book I wish someone could have written about my own father, and I know of no higher praise than that. This is a book for railroaders, historians, Americans, and every father's child. At the end, I hated to have to say good-bye to O.P.--and to his son John--but I left knowing much more about the first half of 20th Century America, and I really enjoyed the telling.

This is what too many railroad histories lack -- the human element. This is the story of a man and how he ran locomotives across Pennsylvania. It is also the story of his son, who loved trains and loved to listen to his father's stories. If you are frustrated by railroad histories that are nothing but an endless series of stock transactions, then this is your book.

This book is not much larger than a paperback. I am 25 with perfect vision and I still feel I should use a magnifying lense with this book.

The Complete Works of Irish poet Oscar Wilde, which is published by Collins, is a must for a private library. It is an excellent book even if you only want to check one of Wilde's witty quotes - and there are plenty. The book includes Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which caused a fin-de-siecle scandal about a century ago because of its underlying homoeroticism. There are also all his famous plays which he wrote and was loved for by English society such as The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband as well as Lady Windermere's Fan. In addition, there are stories, poems (such as The Ballad of Reading Gaol - the jail he had to go to for his affair with Bosie Douglas), essays, and letters such as De Profundis. This newly illustrated centenary edition also incorporates recent revisions to the text, which probably only experts will spot.

Oscar Wilde was a self-described man of paradox. He was, simultaneously, a man very much of his time, and also very ahead of his time. He was a highly moral man who wrote clever epigrams about how good it is to be wicked ("Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.") He was a happily married man who happily loved his two children but also led a gay life on the side and wrote hilarous satires of love and marriage ("Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.") This huge book, which contains practically everything that Wilde ever wrote, shows the man in all his glory. After the introduction by his son, we are first launched into Oscar's stories. His one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a classic and a masterpiece. A devastating moral tale, this one deserves to be in everyone's library. His shorter pieces, however, are of a more questionable quality. Consisting mostly of moral ancedotes dressed up in the thinly-veiled guise of fairy tales for children, these works are the least exciting part of Wilde's oeuvre and of this book, and seem to lean heavily on his oft-spouted crutch of "Art for Art's sake." After the stories, we meet Wilde in the guise he was destined for: that of a dramatist. His play were an integral and ackwnoledged part of his genius, and their influence upon modern drama was enormous. His type of high, farcial "drawing room" comedy has left a permanent mark on the stage. It is easy to see how even the modern Hollywood sitcom sprung from these plays of Wilde's. However funny and biting the satire may be, though, the high point of Oscar Wilde's plays was always his epigram-laced dialogue - whatever the plot may be. Probably the finest - and most biting - aphorist the English language has ever produced, Wilde is probably quoted - whether people realize it or not - more often than any other source in the language, aside from The Bible and Shakespeare. The Importance of Being Earnest and Salome are his ackwnoledged masterpieces, but other plays - such as A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband - are very good plays as well. He also has some very fine and underrated less original works, such as The Duchess of Padua that are quite well worth reading. From here, we move into Wilde's poems. Although, as he himself admits, they sometimes contain "more rhyme than reason", there is no doubting that Wilde was a master of language, and a fine poet. He won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry while at Oxford, and his "Ballad of Reading Gaol" is one of the finest poems in existence. What's left are his essays and letters. The most famous of them - indeed, one of the most famous letters ever written - is De Profundis, his strangely moving and tragic love/hate letter to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. This is a shocking and immensely moving piece of work, and deserves to be read by one and all for its unique look into the human psyche - particuarly that of a man under intense suffering, and possibly on the brink. The letter is fascinating, and should put a different spin on Wilde than many people inaccurately have of the man - he was obviously of a very high moral character. Several interesting essays are also included - among them are The Critic As Artist and The Decay of Lying, two masterful pieces of Plato-istic dialogue, putting Wilde's severe wit and intimidating intellectualism on full display for all to see. One may wonder how much he actually believes of what he writes, but what he writes is brilliant. Another interesting essay is The Portrait of Mr. W.H., in which Wilde puts forth an interesting and unique theory about Shakespeare's sonnets. Also, while Wilde was not generally known for his political opinions, it is quite interesting to read his essay on political and social reform, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, as well as two letters he wrote about proposed reformations of the prison system.

All in all, this is a collection of masterful writings from one of the most tragically overlooked and underrated writers in the whole of literature. As another reviewer has pointed out, while Wilde rarely gets the credit he deserves for his work - and is often ignored, overlooked, or simply dismissed - his works are also widely and frequently plagarised - not to mention quoted legitimately - and were obviously extremely influential. You owe it to yourself to read the man's writings if you are not familar with his works; I guarantee you you won't regret it.