The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, March, 2001

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Volume 1: Poems and Poems in Prose. Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson, editors. Oxford University Press. [pound]60.00. 333 pages. ISBN 0-19-811960-7. This new publishing venture, which will include the complete works of Oscar Wilde, begins with his poems. According to the Introduction, by Ian Small, these verses, with the exception of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, have been undervalued and unfairly condemned by generations of critics, some of whom claim that Wilde was a plagiarist.

Critical opinion is changing, however, and Mr Small argues that in fact Wilde devoted much craftsmanship to his poetry and took its writing serious throughout his life. The earliest poems were written when he was at Trinity College, Dublin and some have never been published before. Twenty-two were not included in Robert Ross's 1908 Collected Edition of Wilde's works. This new edition has all the expertise one expects of such a volume from O.U.P. although rather oddly the editors refer to Mary, Viscountes s Eccles as Viscountess Mary Hyde Eccles. (P.P.F.)