The Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde contains passages from his short poems, essays, plays, and letters. There is a lot from de Profundis, which was written while Wilde was in prison. Wilde wrote many essays on other authors, in which he would criticize them or praise them.
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.