An Ideal Husband

by Oscar Wilde

Overview

Oscar Wilde's play An Ideal Husband is a comedy about politics, blackmail and corruption. The action takes place over three days in London, and it questions ideas of public and private honor. It is a play about the past catching up with one in the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781412164566
Publisher:	eBooksLib
Publication date:	04/21/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	120 KB

About the Author

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was a Dublin-born poet and playwright who studied at the Portora Royal School, before attending Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford. The son of two writers, Wilde grew up in an intellectual environment. As a young man, his poetry appeared in various periodicals including Dublin UniversityMagazine. In 1881, he published his first book Poems, an expansive collection of his earlier works. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was released in 1890 followed by the acclaimed plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

Date of Birth:

October 16, 1854

Date of Death:

November 30, 1900

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Education:

The Royal School in Enniskillen, Dublin, 1864; Trinity College, Dublin, 1871; Magdalen College, Oxford, England, 1874

Editorial Reviews

Gr 7 Up Lovers of Oscar Wilde's stories will delight in this new illustrated version of The Canterville Ghost if the picture book format does not keep them from finding it. Wilde's story of an American family who moves into Canterville Chase and annoys a weary ghost with their lack of belief in him is a wry commentary on the ways of British nobility and of their hard-headed American cousins. Like many of Wilde's tales, this one is filled with sophisticated allusions to his social and political milieu, but ends as sentimental romance. Zwerger's wry pictures highlight this tone beautifully. Her toothless ghost is round and comical, as would suit a ghost whom no one fears, and her heroine, Virginia, is young and sweetly boyish. All of the illustrations are set against misty gray watercolor backgrounds except for the climactic scene, echoed on the front cover, in which the tiny huntsmen on the wallpaper call out to Virginia to ``Go Back.'' This will make a fine read-aloud for audiences of secondary students who are prepared to savor Wilde's ironic humor and Zwerger's delicate watercolors. Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie

School Library Journal

The second volume in a series of comic book adaptations of Wilde's tales [see BKL Ja 15 93 for previous volume] gives "The Young King" and "The Remarkable Rocket" the Marvel-DC treatment. In elaborate underground "comix" style, Russell reintroduces the tales with an accessible if nontraditional approach to picture-book illustration and better-than-average adaptations of the original texts. Whether you believe circulating comics in the library is appropriate or not, this full-color book won't stay on the shelf for long, and it may well attract readers to a genre they might not usually find appealing.

Janice Del Negro

The L.A. Theatre Works performs plays tailored for a radio format before live audiences. The works are treats for the ear: Each features first-rate performances, rich but not overdone sound effects, evocative background music, expert engineering and the immediacy of an audience’s live responses. AN IDEAL HUSBAND, Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedy, shows how a good adaptation of a classic play can speak to the present age. Martin Jarvis and director Michael Hackett have slightly streamlined Wilde's play about a rising politician with a secret in his past whose efforts to prevent exposure call attention to the hypocrisy of holding our leaders to higher standards than we ourselves live by. The large cast handles the witty dialogue with delicacy: Jacqueline Bisset charmingly plays one of dramatic literature's most polite blackmailers. The insouciance of the performances emphasizes rather than detracts from the play's serious theme of social hypocrisy. G.H. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

MAY 98 - AudioFile