The Project Gutenberg eBook, Reviews, by Oscar Wilde, Edited by Robert Ross

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Title: Reviews

Author: Oscar Wilde

Release Date: December 2, 2004 [eBook #14240]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVIEWS***

Transcribed from the 1908 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

REVIEWS

To Mrs. CAREW

The apparently endless difficulties against which I have contended, and
am contending, in the management of Oscar Wilde's literary and dramatic
property have brought me many valued friends; but only one friendship
which seemed as endless; one friend's kindness which seemed to annul the
disappointments of eight years. That is why I venture to place your name
on this volume with the assurance of the author himself who bequeathed to
me his works and something of his indiscretion.

ROBERT ROSS

May 12th, 1908.

INTRODUCTION

The editor of writings by any author not long deceased is censured sooner
or later for his errors of omission or commission. I have decided to err
on the side of commission and to include in the uniform edition of
Wilde's works everything that could be identified as genuine. Wilde's
literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against
any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferred
to forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove of
unusual interest; some of the reviews are curiously prophetic; some are,
of course, biassed by prejudice hostile or friendly; others are conceived
in the author's wittiest and happiest vein; only a few are colourless.
And if, according to Lord Beaconsfield, the verdict of a continental
nation may be regarded as that of posterity, Wilde is a much greater
force in our literature than even friendly contemporaries ever supposed
he would become.

It should be remembered, however, that at the time when most of these
reviews were written Wilde had published scarcely any of the works by
which his name has become famous in Europe, though the protagonist of the
aesthetic movement was a well-known figure in Paris and London. Later h