We have not been taught to take Oscar Wilde seriously and with each proceeding generation, we seem to be compressing him into a voice that doles out epigrams. Wilde was much more than the dandified wit, immortalized by Gilbert and Sullivan in their opera, Patience. And yet it is difficult to go beyond the epigrams and the wisecracks; how often we have read “I have nothing to declare except my genius” or “I love acting. It is so much more real than life.” Now here is a book that gives you all this in context and also gives you the not clever, not witty things that Oscar Wilde said, the pathetic sad things that he said towards the end, in jail and after. The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde is a well-chosen collection. Would you not be moved to reads Wilde saying “Between me and life there is a mist of words always”?
