Transcribed from the 1914 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
SELECTED PROSE OF OSCAR WILDE
Contents:
Preface by Robert Ross
How They Struck a Contemporary
The Quality of George Meredith
Life in the Fallacious Model
Life the Disciple
Life the Plagiarist
The Indispensable East
The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate
An Exposure to Naturalism
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
Wainewright at Hobart Town
Cardinal Newman and the Autobiographers
Robert Browning
The Two Supreme and Highest Arts
The Secrets of Immortality
The Critic and his Material
Dante the Living Guide
The Limitations of Genius
Wanted A New Background
Without Frontiers
The Poetry of Archæology
The Art of Archæology
Herod Suppliant
The Tetrarch’s Remorse
The Tetrarch’s Treasure
Salomé anticipates Dr. Strauss
The Young King
A Coronation
The King of Spain
A Bull Fight
The Throne Room
A Protected Country
The Blackmailing of the Emperor
Covent Garden
A Letter from Miss Jane Percy to her Aunt
The Triumph of American ‘Humor’
The Garden of Death
An Eton Kit-cat
Mrs. Erlynne Exercises the Prerogative of a Grandmother
Motherhood more than Marriage
The Damnable Ideal
From a Rejected Prize-essay
The Possibilities of the Useful
The Artist
The Doer of Good
The Disciple
The Master
The House of Judgment
The Teacher of Wisdom
Wilde gives directions about ‘De Profundis’
Carey Street
Sorrow wears no mask
Vita Nuova
The Grand Romantic
Clapham Junction
The Broken Resolution
Domesticity at Berneval
A visit to the Pope
DEDICATION
This anthology is dedicated to Michael Lykiardopulos as a little token of his services to English Literature in the great Russian Empire.
PREFACE
With the possible exceptions of the Greek Anthology, the “Golden Treasury” and those which bear the name of E. V. Lucas, no selections of poetry or prose have ever given complete satisfaction to anyone except the compiler. But critics derive great satisfaction from pointing out errors of omission and inclusion on the part of the anthologist, and all of us have putatively re-arranged and re-edited even the “Golden Treasury” in our leisure moments. In an age when “Art for Art’s sake” is an exploded doctrine, anthologies, like everything else, must have a purpose. The purpose or object of the present volume is to afford admirers of Wilde’s work the same innocent pleasure obtainable from similar compilations, namely that of reconstructing a selection of their own in their mind’s eye—for copyright considerations would interfere with the materialisation of their dream.
A stray observation in an esteemed weekly periodical determined the plan of this anthology and the choice of particular passages. The writer, whose name has escaped me, opined that the reason the works of Pater and Wilde were no longer read was owing to both authors having treated English as a dead language. By a singular coincidence I had purchased simultaneously with the newspaper a shilling copy of Pater’s “Renaissance,” published by Messrs. Macmillan; and a few days afterwards Messrs. Methuen issued at a shilling the twenty-eighth edition of “De Profundis.” Obviously either Messrs. Macmillan and Messrs. Methuen or the authority on dead languages must have been suffering from hallucinations. It occurred to me that a selection of Wilde’s prose might at least rehabilitate the notorious reputation for common sense enjoyed by all publishers, who rarely issue shilling editions of deceased authors for mere æsthetic considerations. And I confess to a hope that this volume may reach the eye or ear of those who have not read Wilde’s books, or of those, such as Mr. Sydney Grundy, who are irritated by the revival of his plays and the praise accorded to his works throughout the Continent.