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by: Oscar Wilde
List Price: $11.25Amazon.com's Price: $10.12 You Save: $1.13 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.8
EAN: 9780393927535
ISBN: 0393927539
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 210
Publication Date: November 30, 2005
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Sales Rank: 34498
Studio: W. W. Norton
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Product Description:
The text of this Norton Critical Edition of The Importance of Being Earnest is the established three-act version. Originally in four acts, Wilde shortened it to three at the urging of George Alexander, the owner of the St. James Theatre and first actor to play Jack Worthing. The play is accompanied by explanatory annotations and by an appendix of excised portions.
'Backgrounds' includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Joseph Donohue, Regenia Gagnier, and Karl Beckson.
'Reviews and Reactions' collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, among them George Bernard Shaw's famous dissenting view and the American assessment by H. F. 'Essays in Criticism' includes six diverse assessments of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Camille Paglia, Christopher Craft, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Peter Raby, and Richard Haslam.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
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Rating: - An in-depth presentation of the funniest play ever written
Oscar Wilde made his initial reputation as the master of the epigram: the trenchant and mordant, roughly haiku length flashes of insight into the comic absurdity of the world. No one in English Literature before or since has ever displayed such an effortless mastery of wit. "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
The Importance of Being Earnest not only flaunts Wilde's most inconsequential plot, it is also crammed with his funniest epigrams ... Read More
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