Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

Oscar Wilde

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 5. 12. 2016 - 102 strán (strany)

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories is a collection of short semi-comic mystery stories that were written by Oscar Wilde and published in 1891. It includes: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime The Canterville Ghost The Sphinx Without a Secret The Model Millionaire This story was first published in The Court and Society Review, in late 1887. The main character, Lord Arthur Savile, is introduced by Lady Windermere to Mr Septimus R. Podgers, a chiromantist, who reads his palm and tells him that it is his destiny to be a murderer. Lord Arthur wants to marry, but decides he has no right to do so until he has committed the murder. His first attempted murder victim is his elderly Aunt Clementina, who suffers from heartburn. Pretending it is medicine, Lord Arthur gives her a capsule of poison, telling her to take it only when she has an attack of heartburn. Reading a telegram in Venice some time later, he finds that she has died and victoriously returns to London to learn that she has bequeathed him some property. Sorting through the inheritance, his future wife Sybil Merton finds the poison pill, untouched; thus Lord Arthur's aunt died from natural causes and he finds himself in need of a new victim. After some deliberation, he obtains a bomb from a jovial German, disguised as a carriage-clock, and sends it anonymously to a distant relative, the Dean of Chichester. When the bomb goes off, however, the only damage done seems like a novelty trick, and the Dean's son spends his afternoons making tiny, harmless explosions with the clock. In despair, Lord Arthur believes that his marriage plans are doomed, only to encounter the same palm-reader who had told his fortune late at night on the bank of the River Thames. Realising the best possible outcome, he pushes the man off a parapet into the river where he dies. A verdict of suicide is returned at the inquest and Lord Arthur happily goes on to marry. In a slight twist, the palmister is denounced as a fraud, leaving the moral of the story to show the power of suggestion.

Čo hovoria ostatní

LibraryThing Review

Prehľad pre používateľa  - quondame - LibraryThing

The wry distanced tone in which these stories are composed and the consistent observations on the characters are mostly at odds with other tonal elements in these stories and the last is largely a ...

LibraryThing Review

Prehľad pre používateľa  - meandmybooks - LibraryThing

Delicious fun! This is along the lines of “The Importance of Being Earnest” or “An Ideal Husband,” only in short story format rather than a play. Ridiculous, witty, and charming, this story adds a ...

O tomto autorovi

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

Bibliografické informácie

• Názov: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
• Autor: Oscar Wilde
• Vydavateľ: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016
• Kód ISBN: 1540797392, 9781540797391
• Dĺžka: 102 strán (strany)