The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift from a Victorian to a Modern consciousness. The play began its career as a biting satire directed at the very audience who received it so delightedly, but ended its initial run as a harbinger of Wilde's personal downfall when his lover's father, who would later bring about Wilde's arrest and imprisonment, attempted to disrupt the production.

In addition to its focus on the textual history of the play, this Broadview Edition of Earnest provides a wide array of appendices. The edition locates Wilde's work among the artistic and cultural contexts of the late nineteenth century and will provide scholars, students, and general readers with an important sourcebook for the play and the social, creative, and critical contexts of mid-1890s English life.

Comments:

"Samuel Lyndon Gladden's edition of The Importance of Being Earnest continues Broadview Press's proven tradition of excellence. This book will serve the undergraduate, general reader, and scholar. Gladden's introduction is provocative, and the ancillary materials are especially welcome. Gladden balances familiar with unexpected contemporary works – from Gilbert and Sullivan to Ada Leverson, playbills to reviews, poems to pictures, conduct manuals to dandy tracts – plus excerpts of Wilde's writings, including an earlier version of the play. Bibliography and chronology complete the presentation as one-stop shopping for an earnest acquaintance with Wilde's charmer as social text." - Frederick S. Roden, University of Connecticut

"Broadview's Importance of Being Earnest carries on the press's excellent series of texts for general readers and students alike. Samuel Lyndon Gladden presents the three-act text, as well as an appendix with important scenes and lines from the original four-act version. The volume includes many useful annotations and glosses, appendices with contextual information, illustrations, and extracts from letters and documents that will enhance understanding and interpretation of the play. The introduction places the play in up-to-date critical and biographical contexts, illuminating issues without closing down other approaches to making sense of Wilde's carefully composed dramatic nonsense." - Philip E. Smith, University of Pittsburgh

Samuel Lyndon Gladden is Associate Professor, Coordinator of Graduate Studies in English, and Dean's Faculty Administrative Fellow for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Northern Iowa.

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Oscar Wilde: A Brief Chronology

A Note on the Text

The Importance of Being Earnest

Appendix A: Playbills for The Importance of Being Earnest from Opening Night and Post-Arrest Nights

1. The first, uncensored playbill for The Importance of Being Earnest
2. The second, censored playbill for The Importance of Being Earnest

Appendix B: Reactions to and Reviews of the Initial Run of The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Followed by Max Beerbohm's Recollection of the Play's Revival (1902)

1. Unsigned review from The Daily Graphic (15 February 1895)
2. Review by William Archer from The World (20 February 1895)
3. Unsigned review from The Observer (17 February 1895)
4. Unsigned review from The Times (15 February 1895)
5. Review by George Bernard Shaw from Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932)
6. Max Beerbohm's recollection of the opening night of the 1902 revival

Appendix C: Ada Leverson's "The Advisability of Not Being Brought Up in a Handbag: A Trivial Tragedy for Wonderful People," from Punch (1895), followed by Wilde's Telegram to Leverson Acknowledging the Piece

1. Ada Leverson, "The Advisability of Not Being Brought Up in a Handbag."
2. Telegram from Oscar Wilde to Ada Leverson (15 February 1895)

Appendix D: Extracts from Three Works by Gilbert and Sullivan

1. W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, from Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride (1881)
2. W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, from The Gondoliers (1889)
3. W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, from HMS Pinafore (1878)

Appendix E: Passages from J.G.F. Nicholson's Love in Earnest (1892)

Appendix F: Excerpts from two conduct manuals roughly contemporaneous with Earnest

1. Mrs. Humphrey, from Manners for Men (1897)
2. Julia McNair Wright, from Practical Life (1881)

Appendix G: On Dandyism and on Wilde as a Dandy

1. From Charles Kendrick, Ye Soul Agonies in Ye Life of Oscar Wilde (1882)
2. George Frederick Keller, "The Modern Messiah" (1882)
3. Linley Sambourne, "O.W." (1881)
4. From Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith, "No Wave of His Chiseled Hand" (1936)
5. "Aestheticism as Oscar Understands It" (1882)
6. "Mr. Wild [sic] of Borneo" (1882)
7. W.H. Beard, "The Aesthetic Monkey" (1882)

Appendix H: Excerpts from Other Works by Wilde and from Wilde's Letters

Appendix I:  Material from the original four-act MS and TS of Lady Lancing: A Serious Comedy for Trivial People (later shortened, re-titled, performed in 1895 and published in 1899 by Leonard Smithers as The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People)

1. Passages from the exchanges regarding Ernest's past-due accounts at the Savoy
2. Passages suggesting different aspects of the characters and roles of Miss Prism
3. Additional passages from the MS and TS not included in Smithers' three-act edition of The Importance of Being Earnest

Select Bibliography