Oscar Wilde
10 livros
- A Woman of No Importance EnglishWilde lets his idle aristocrats trade epigrams for two acts, and Lord Illingworth is horribly quotable, then the play turns serious when Mrs Arbuthnot's old secret surfaces. If you want pure froth you might resist the melodrama, but the wit alone earns the evening.
- An Ideal Husband EnglishYou get Wilde at his sharpest in the drawing-room sparring between Lord Goring and the dangerously composed Mrs Cheveley, while Sir Robert Chiltern’s spotless public image starts to crack. It’s funny, fast, and more forgiving about human weakness than its polished manners initially suggest.
- Children’s Stories EnglishFair warning: these fairy tales will wreck you a little. The swallow staying with the Happy Prince through the frost, the giant's garden thawing when the children sneak back in, it's all gorgeous and melancholy at once, sadder and stranger than anything you'd actually read to a kid.
- Het portret van Dorian Gray NederlandsDorian Gray wenst dat zijn portret oud zou worden in plaats van hijzelf, en Lord Henry, die bijna alleen in epigrammen praat, laat hem maar al te graag zien wat dat zou kunnen betekenen. Het is het grootste deel van de tijd geestig en zwaar geparfumeerd, en wordt dan kil en beangstigend.
- Lady Windermere’s Fan EnglishYou can read it in an evening, and half the fun is watching Wilde hand every character a line too clever to waste. But Mrs. Erlynne sneaks up on you; under all the epigrams about cynics and gutters there's a real ache about who gets forgiven.
- Le portrait de Dorian Gray Français
- Wilde in a wicked mood: a man told by a palm reader he'll commit murder decides to get it over with before his wedding, and treats it like a chore. If you like your comedy dry and slightly heartless, the Canterville Ghost story alone earns the afternoon.
- Poetry EnglishFair warning, the early poems are lush to the point of perfumed, all lilies and Greek statues, but stay for The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written after prison broke him. That one's stark and aching, and Requiescat, for his dead sister, might quietly wreck you.
- The Importance of Being Earnest EnglishYou can read it in an afternoon and laugh out loud the whole way; Algernon inventing a sickly friend named Bunbury to dodge dinner parties, Lady Bracknell interrogating a suitor about his handbag. Nothing serious happens, which is exactly the point, and the wordplay still lands.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray EnglishWilde gives every character his best one-liners, so you'll laugh even as the whole thing curdles into something genuinely creepy. Lord Henry's lazy, poisonous charm is the real draw; you'll catch yourself agreeing with him and then feeling slightly guilty about it.