Contains : Lady Windermere's Fan - A Woman of No Importance - An Ideal Husband - The Importance of Being Earnest - Salomé.

Wilde's works were laying on a wishlist, as well as, twice, "The importance of being Earnest".

Received this the day before yesterday. Thank you! I hope to read this sometime after I finish The Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Finished this one. The plays were very clever and sophisticated, not at all like The Selfish Giant and 'The Happy Prince' (the basis of my aquaintance with Wilde prior to this book). There were certainly parts that were very enjoyable, but overall the plays seemed to paint a fairly clear picture of the boredom and artifice of nineteenth-century London high society. I can see why there was a Romantic movement that rejected all of this pretension and stuffiness and took to the fields and forests instead, to get a dose of reality. Maybe this was Wilde's purpose in writing these, I don't know. Here's a part of Wilde's poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” which I love:

And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper’s house
With scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy those whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

Next I will read Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, which I have been wanting to read for a long time.

Hello Passeur-X.

I got your letter yesterday. Thank you! I will respond in kind. In the meantime, this might interest you: The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde (Song)

Left on a bench on Otho Street. Happy travels!

I'm now reading Another Life is Possible, by Clare Stober.