Irish · 1854–1900
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish playwright and prose writer whose wit remains the most immediately quotable in English literature. Imprisoned in 1895 for gross indecency, he emerged broken and died three years later, but the work he produced before — The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray — has never lost its readership. warpread.app includes both his major prose works. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the shortest texts in the library at 25,000 words; The Picture of Dorian Gray is his only novel.
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Two young men maintain false identities to escape their social obligations, both claiming a fictitious alter ego named Ernest. The machine of deception spins until it has to stop — and the revelation, when it comes, is the most perfectly timed joke in English drama. A play so quotable that Wilde's wit has never really been out of circulation.
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