The Importance of Being Earnest (Broadview Editions): A Trivial Comedy for Serious People - Softcover

Oscar Wilde

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551116944 ISBN 13: 9781551116945

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2010

Synopsis

This edition’s introduction and appendices focus on the play’s textual history and its importance to late-Victorian culture.|The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift from a Victorian to a Modern consciousness. The play began its career as a biting satire directed at the very audience who received it so delightedly, but ended its initial run as a harbinger of Wilde’s personal downfall when his lover’s father, who would later bring about Wilde’s arrest and imprisonment, attempted to disrupt the production. In addition to its focus on the textual history of the play, this Broadview Edition of Earnest provides a wide array of appendices. The edition locates Wilde’s work among the artistic and cultural contexts of the late nineteenth century and will provide scholars, students, and general readers with an important sourcebook for the play and the social, creative, and critical contexts of mid-1890s English life.

About this title

About the Author

Samuel Lyndon Gladden is Associate Professor, Coordinator of Graduate Studies in English, and Dean's Faculty Administrative Fellow for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Northern Iowa.

From the Back Cover

The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift from a Victorian to a Modern consciousness. The play began its career as a biting satire directed at the very audience who received it so delightedly, but ended its initial run as a harbinger of Wilde's personal downfall when his lover's father, who would later bring about Wilde's arrest and imprisonment, attempted to disrupt the production.

In addition to its focus on the textual history of the play, this Broadview Edition of Earnest provides a wide array of appendices. The edition locates Wilde's work among the artistic and cultural contexts of the late nineteenth century and will provide scholars, students, and general readers with an important sourcebook for the play and the social, creative, and critical contexts of mid-1890s English life.

Edition details

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1551116944
• ISBN 13: 9781551116945
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224