Showing results by author "Oscar Wilde" in All Categories

A lord, his wife, her admirer and an infamous blackmailer converge in the irreverent satire that launched Wilde's succession of classic social comedies. This delicious comic feast serves up a scandal about good girls, bad husbands and hilarious hypocrisy - utterly contemporary and divinely funny.

This is one of the great recordings of a great play. John Gielgud stars as Earnest and Edith Evans gives her indomitable performance as Lady Bracknell in this classic radio recording from 1951.

This is a story from the Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories collection.

The American Otis family moves into the old English country house Canterville Chase. They are warned that the house is haunted before they move in but are unconcerned at first. They soon accept that the ghost is real but are not frightened by it. The ghost, who had been frightening all those who stayed at Canterville Chase for 300 years, takes the Americans' unwillingness to be scared by him as a great insult. He grows to despise them all, except for the teenage daughter, Virginia, who he feels is different from the rest of her family.

A palmist’s prediction leads to murder; an enigmatic woman’s lifestyle is a mystery to be solved; a ghost tries to frighten the new tenants of his home; a man has discovered the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; a millionaire wants to be painted as a pauper. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories is a collection of fascinating short stories which are subversive as well as entertaining.

The Irish have always had a knack for telling wonderful stories, and their fantastic ability has been recognized from early Gaelic times. For centuries, stories of all kinds have been offered to friends and strangers alike as a form of entertainment and communication. Today in Ireland, the short story is revered even above the novel. Hearing these magnificent stories, we become aware of more than just the humor and travail of a small island.

Devilishly attractive Lord Illingworth is notorious for his skill as a seducer. But he is still invited to all the "best" houses, while his female conquests must hide their shame in seclusion. In this devastating drawing-room comedy, Oscar Wilde uses his celebrated wit to expose English society's narrow view of everything from sexual mores to Americans.

This curated collection brings together five iconic works from some of Ireland's greatest writers, each offering a distinct voice and vision that helped shape modern Irish literature. From gothic horror to modernist experimentation, biting satire to fading aristocracy, these novels capture the complexities of identity, society, and imagination across centuries.

Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author's most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray 's moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel's corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, "a terrible moral in Dorian Gray ." Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment.

This anthology looks back over some of the great love affairs of literary history. It includes readings of poetry, letters and scenes from fiction written by British poets and authors from Shakespearian times to the twentieth century. Here are real-life romantic couples, such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Fanny Brawne, Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb, Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.

The most personal of Oscar Wilde's works, The Picture of Dorian Grey was also one of the earliest. It was published in 1891 and caused immediate controversy and great notoriety for its writer. The story of an immensely beautiful and hedonistic boy whose conscience becomes separate from his body and housed in a portrait which slowly and hideously ages and decays in keeping with his increasing depravity whilst the boy himself remains untouched plays with all of Oscar Wilde's theories of art and life.

The classic of eternal youth. 'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young… If it was only the other way!' Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires...

Es wird behauptet, im Leben eines Menschen gäbe es einige wenige Tage, die sein Leben grundlegend verändern können. Einen solchen erlebt der irische Schriftsteller Oscar Wilde im Frühjahr 1895. Anstelle neuer Ausschweifungen und Ruhm als Autor drohen eine Gefängnisstrafe und der persönliche Ruin. Doch plötzlich tritt ein Fremder an Wilde heran und bietet ihm einen möglichen Ausweg aus seiner schwierigen Situation.

Der Spion in den eigenen Reihen ist enttarnt. Nach wochenlanger Suche gelingt den Mitarbeitern von Mycroft Holmes endlich der entscheidende Durchbruch. In einem geheimen Gewölbe stoßen sie auf Hinweise auf ein Treffen hochrangiger Mitglieder des Zirkels. Die Spur führt nach Schottland. Oscar Wilde begibt sich auf eine gefährliche Mission mitten ins Herz des Feindes.

Oscar Wilde wird mit einem sonderbaren Auftrag nach Paris geschickt: Er soll eine verwirrte junge Frau ausfindig machen, um sie zu einem berühmten Pariser Nervenarzt zu bringen. Was zunächst wie ein Kinderspiel klingt, entpuppt sich schnell als eine gefährliche Mörderjagd. Der Zirkel der Sieben ist ebenfalls hinter der jungen Frau her, deren Identität von einem großen Geheimnis umgeben ist.

Oscar Wilde's only novel, given a superbly splendid modern reading by the talented Rupert Graves. Many classic Wilde quotes emanate from this horror novel.

Golden Voice narrator Simon Jones perfectly narrates these sweet, tender fairy stories about princes, giants, nightingales, and roses. The collection begins with the timeless story of the Happy Prince, a young nobleman who in life sought only pleasure but in death, as a gold-encrusted statue, provides help to those in need.

Sir Robert Chiltern seems to have the perfect life: he's a successful, well-paid government minister and he has a loving wife. But when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed, all of this is threatened.

A young man commits all types of sins, but only his portrait shows the ravages of his life. Oscar Wilde's Faustian classic. Gothic horror at its best.

Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, the dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged---petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral---while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying and enchanting readers for more than 100 years.