Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
By Oscar Wilde
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About this ebook
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford.
Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891. His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London.
Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. It was to break him.
On release he left for France and there he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.
Oscar Wilde
OSCAR WILDE (Dublín, 1854–París, 1900), poeta y dramaturgo irlandés, es considerado uno de los más célebres escritores en lengua inglesa de todos los tiempos, tanto por su provocadora personalidad como por su obra. Escribió relatos y novelas, como El retrato de Dorian Gray, poemas como el desgarrador La balada de la cárcel de Reading, y fue enormemente popular en el Londres victoriano por su exitosa producción teatral, como La importancia de llamarse Ernesto, y por su ingenio mordaz y brillante conversación.
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Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde – An Introduction
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford.
Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891. His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London.
Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. It was to break him.
On release he left for France and there he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
It was Lady Windermere’s last reception before Easter and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker’s Levée in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsrühe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing immoderately at everything that was said to her. It was certainly a wonderful medley of people. Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses. In fact, it was one of Lady Windermere’s best nights, and the Princess stayed till nearly half-past eleven.
As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley. She looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair. Or pur they were—not that pale straw colour that nowadays usurps the gracious name of gold, but such gold as is woven into sunbeams or hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner. She was a curious psychological study. Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality. She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her. She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of remaining young.
Suddenly she looked eagerly round the room, and said, in her clear contralto voice, ‘Where is my cheiromantist?’
‘Your what, Gladys?’ exclaimed the Duchess, giving an involuntary start.