Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
The Importance of Being Earnest (Legend Classics) - cover

The Importance of Being Earnest (Legend Classics)

Oscar Wilde

Publisher: Legend Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” 
Oscar Wilde was already one of the best known literary figures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn his extraordinary talents to the theatre. Between 1891 and 1895 he produced a sequence of distinctive plays which spearheaded the dramatic renaissance of the 1890s and still retain their power among today's audiences. 
The final comic or dramatic work from undisputed genius Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is his most enduring popular play and a must-read for any Wilde fan. 
A farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ to escape burdensome social obligations, the play is an unforgettable satire of Victorian ways. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major theme is the triviality with which it treats institutions. 
Wilde's notoriety caused the play, despite its early success, to be closed after 86 performances. This latest edition allows you to discover or enjoy once again the writing of one of history's great comedy and drama writers. 
The Legend Classics series:Around the World in Eighty DaysThe Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe Importance of Being EarnestAlice's Adventures in WonderlandThe MetamorphosisThe Railway ChildrenThe Hound of the BaskervillesFrankensteinWuthering HeightsThree Men in a BoatThe Time MachineLittle WomenAnne of Green GablesThe Jungle BookThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other StoriesDraculaA Study in ScarletLeaves of GrassThe Secret GardenThe War of the WorldsA Christmas CarolStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeHeart of DarknessThe Scarlet LetterThis Side of ParadiseOliver TwistThe Picture of Dorian GrayTreasure IslandThe Turn of the ScrewThe Adventures of Tom SawyerEmmaThe TrialA Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan PoeGrimm Fairy TalesThe AwakeningMrs DallowayGulliver’s TravelsThe Castle of OtrantoSilas MarnerHard Times
Available since: 06/01/2017.

Other books that might interest you

  • Private Learoyd's Story (Unabridged) - cover

    Private Learoyd's Story...

    Rudyard Kipling

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    This tale was first published in "The Week's News" on 14 July, 1888, and collected in the Indian Railway Library No 1 and Soldiers Three in the same year.Mrs DeSussa, a wealthy Eurasian lady, has taken a fancy to the Colonel's wife's dog, 'Rip', an engaging terrier. She offers Learoyd 350 rupees if he will steal the dog for her, so that she can take it home at the end of the cold season. The three soldiers steal another dog from the Canteen Sergeant, dye its coat so that it looks like Rip, and hand it over to her at the railway station. They hasten away before she discovers the deception - and the dog's bad temper- and divide the 350 rupees between them.
    Show book
  • Whereyouwantogoto - cover

    Whereyouwantogoto

    E. Nesbit

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Selim and Thomasina are very put out that they must stay in London during the summer holidays, instead of going to the seaside, just because their aunt and uncle are coming to stay.  (They're not even the nice kind of aunt and uncle!) The hot summer becomes more bearable when an India-rubber ball takes them to Whereyouwantogoto, a magical seaside place where there are no grown-ups around to tell children what to do.  The only condition for staying in this dreamland is that the children must continue to be good, but being good is easy when you're happy… or is it?    Whereyouwantogoto was first published in Nine Unlikely Tales, 1901.
    Show book
  • Sense and Sensibility - cover

    Sense and Sensibility

    Jane Austen

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
    Show book
  • The Earl Warder and the Wayward Heiress - cover

    The Earl Warder and the Wayward...

    J. S. Fletcher

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863 – 1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Victorian "Golden Age" of the short story."The Earl, the Warder and the Wayward Heiress" is the story of a ten-thousand-pound bet between young gentlemen in their club. The Earl of Normanstowe undertakes to walk out of the club at eight o'clock that evening, and given a sixteen hour start, to disappear for the period of exactly one month without leaving London.Sir Charles Wrigge undertakes to track him down within the month. Normanstowe's plan for his concealment is certainly novel... but the outcome of his adventure is anything but what he expected.
    Show book
  • New Jerusalem The (Unabridged) - cover

    New Jerusalem The (Unabridged)

    G.K. Chesterton

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of anyone involved in the production of this book, and are not the views of LibriVox. Dale Ahlquist calls the book a "philosophical travelogue" of Chesterton's journey across Europe to Palestine. "On the road to Cairo one may see twenty groups exactly like that of the Holy Family in the pictures of the Flight into Egypt; with only one difference. The man is riding on the ass." "The real mistake of the Muslims is something much more modern in its application than any particular passing persecution of Christians as such. It lay in the very fact that they did think they had a simpler and saner sort of Christianity, as do many modern Christians. They thought it could be made universal merely by being made uninteresting. Now a man preaching what he thinks is a platitude is far more intolerant than a man preaching what he admits is a paradox. It was exactly because it seemed self-evident, to Muslims as to Bolshevists, that their simple creed was suited to everybody, that they wished in that particular sweeping fashion to impose it on everybody.
    Show book
  • Notes From The Underground - The Classic Tale - cover

    Notes From The Underground - The...

    Fyodor Dostoevsky

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?. The second part of the book is called "Àpropos of the Wet Snow," and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator. 
     
    Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. His literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). 
     
    Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature, as multiple of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.
    Show book