Oscar Wilde, a “Jester at the Court of English Literature”?
Though perhaps better known for his plays and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde published three collections of short stories during his lifetime. John Sloan introduces Oscar Wilde’s literary career and the place of the short story within it.
For the first time in one volume, this complete collection of all the short fiction Oscar Wilde published contains such social and literary parodies as “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” and “The Canterville Ghost”; such well-known fairy tales as “The Happy Prince”, “The Young King”, and “The Fisherman and his Soul”; an imaginary portrait of the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets entitled “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”; and the parables Wilde referred to as “Poems in Prose”, including “The Artist”, “The House of Judgment”, and “The Teacher of Wisdom”.
In this extract from the audio guide to Wilde’s shorter fiction, John Sloan of Harris Manchester College, Oxford introduces some of the themes and concerns that preoccupied Wilde the short story writer.
This is an extract from the full audio guide to Wilde’s shorter fiction. Read more
