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Selected Poems

Oscar Wilde

Edited by Malcolm Hicks

Cover Picture of Selected Poems
Categories: 19th Century, Irish
Imprint: Fyfield Books
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (128 pages)
(Pub. Sep 1997)
9780856359842
Out of Stock
  • Description
  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Then suddenly the tune went false,
    The dancers wearied of the waltz,
    The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl,

    And down the long and silent street
    The dawn with silver-sandalled feet,
    Crept like a frightened girl.


    from 'The Harlot's House'


    The life and works of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) have a perennial fascination for the theatre-going and reading public, and it is surprising that no separate edition of the poetry has been published for decades. Malcolm Hicks provides a generous and timely selection, introduction and notes. Here is the brilliant twenty-six-year-old's only collection of poems, which displays his sensuousness and technical precocity, with deft echoes of earlier masters. The young Wilde explores styles and forms to counteract what seemed to him the exhaustion of the poetic language current at the time. The substantial works of his later maturity - including 'The Harlot's House', The Sphynx and the legendary Ballad of Reading Gaol - are also included.
    Oscar Wilde
    Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 and became one of the most celebrated dramatists of the nineteenth century, as well as a distinguished novelist and poet. He was born in Dublin and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalene College, Oxford, where he won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his long ... read more
    Malcolm Hicks
    ... read more
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