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The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
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  • Published: 3 July 2000
  • ISBN: 9780140436068
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $24.99

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Formats & editions
Paperback
19 Sept 2016
Paperback
3 July 2000
EBook
7 July 2016
EBook
7 Feb 2012
EBook
21 July 2010
EBook
3 July 2000
Audiobook
1 Mar 2010
Paperback
19 Mar 2012
Paperback
1 Dec 2004
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Penguin Classics relaunch

Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. Includes Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, A Florentine Tragedy and The Importance of Being Earnest, which appears in full with the "Grigsby" scene which originally made up the fourth act.
  • Published: 3 July 2000
  • ISBN: 9780140436068
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. He then lived in London and married Constance Lloyd in 1884. Wilde was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement. He became famous because of the immense success of his plays such as Lady Windemere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 but was revised in 1891 after moralistic negative reviews. After a public scandal involving Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour in Reading Gaol for 'gross indecency'. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol was published anonymously in 1898. Wilde never lived in England again and died at the age of forty-six in Paris on 30 November 1900. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery where admirers often leave the lipstick marks of kisses on his tomb.
portrait photo of Oscar Wilde

Also by Oscar Wilde

Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Poet Can Survive Everything But a Misprint
The Complete Fairy Tales
The Star-Child
Penguin Readers Starter Level: The Happy Prince (ELT Graded Reader)
Penguin Readers Level 3: The Picture of Dorian Gray (ELT Graded Reader)
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Praise for The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

[The Importance of Being Earnest] has a strong claim to being the most perfect comedy in the English language

Daily Telegraph

[The Importance of Being Earnest] remains a thing of inimitable brains and beauty; the sharpest of social satires, wrapped in the most perfect of gossamer-light romantic comedies

Scotsman

Oscar Wilde's masterpiece about political chicanery, fraud, blackmail and the hypocrisy of public figures retains an alarming currency

Express (on An Ideal Husband)

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Article
14 of the best literary insults perfect for a quick comeback

Some of the biggest burns from classic literature.