Transcribed from the 1914 Methuen and Co. edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Contents:
Preface by Robert Ross
How They Struck a Contemporary
The Quality of George Meredith
Life in the Fallacious Model
Life the Disciple
Life the Plagiarist
The Indispensable East
The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate
An Exposure to Naturalism
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
Wainewright at Hobart Town
Cardinal Newman and the Autobiographers
Robert Browning
The Two Supreme and Highest Arts
The Secrets of Immortality
The Critic and his Material
Dante the Living Guide
The Limitations of Genius
Wanted A New Background
Without Frontiers
The Poetry of Archæology
The Art of Archæology
Herod Suppliant
The Tetrarch’s Remorse
The Tetrarch’s Treasure
Salomé anticipates Dr. Strauss
The Young King
A Coronation
The King of Spain
A Bull Fight
The Throne Room
A Protected Country
The Blackmailing of the Emperor
Covent Garden
A Letter from Miss Jane Percy to her Aunt
The Triumph of American ‘Humor’
The Garden of Death
An Eton Kit-cat
Mrs. Erlynne Exercises the Prerogative of a Grandmother
Motherhood more than Marriage
The Damnable Ideal
From a Rejected Prize-essay
The Possibilities of the Useful
The Artist
The Doer of Good
The Disciple
The Master
The House of Judgment
The Teacher of Wisdom
Wilde gives directions about ‘De Profundis’
Carey Street
Sorrow wears no mask
Vita Nuova
The Grand Romantic
Clapham Junction
The Broken Resolution
Domesticity at Berneval
A visit to the Pope
This anthology is dedicated to Michael Lykiardopulos as a littletoken of his services to English Literature in the great Russian Empire.
With the possible exceptions of the Greek Anthology, the “GoldenTreasury” and those which bear the name of E. V. Lucas, no selectionsof poetry or prose have ever given complete satisfaction to anyone exceptthe compiler. But critics derive great satisfaction from pointingout errors of omission and inclusion on the part of the anthologist,and all of us have putatively re-arranged and re-edited even the “GoldenTreasury” in our leisure moments. In an age when “Artfor Art’s sake” is an exploded doctrine, anthologies, likeeverything else, must have a purpose. The purpose or object ofthe present volume is to afford admirers of Wilde’s work the sameinnocent pleasure obtainable from similar compilations, namely thatof reconstructing a selection of their own in their mind’s eye—forcopyright considerations would interfere with the materialisation oftheir dream.
A stray observation in an esteemed weekly periodical determined theplan of this anthology and the choice of particular passages. The writer, whose name has escaped me, opined that the reason the worksof Pater and Wilde were no longer read was owing to both authors havingtreated English as a dead language. By a singular coincidenceI had purchased simultaneously with the newspaper a shilling copy ofPater’s “Renaissance,” published by Messrs. Macmillan;and a few days afterwards Messrs. Methuen issued at a shilling the twenty-eighthedition of “De Profundis.” Obviously either Messrs.Macmillan and Messrs. Methuen or the authority on dead languages musthave been suffering from hallucinations. It occurred to me thata selection of Wilde’s prose might at least rehabilitate the notoriousreputation for common sense enjoyed by all publishers, who rarely issueshilling editions of deceased authors for mere æsthetic considerations. And I confess to a hope that this volume may reach the eye or ear ofthose who h