Nothing...Except My Genius

Oscar Wilde

Penguin Adult, Oct 2, 1997 - Literary Collections - 81 pages

'I have nothing to declare', Wilde once told an American customs official, 'except my genius'. A socialite, a wit, a man who flaunted convention and was unafraid to shock, Oscar Wilde was a great writer and a great man. This new collection of wit and wisdom demonstrates the brilliance of his vision, the audacity of his style. Such is the scope of the material, it brings to life the Wilde of great feeling as well as the Wilde of great art.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - LisaMorr - LibraryThing

The most disappointing thing for me is that the title quote is not anywhere in the book! How funny! This is a nice little book of quotations by Oscar Wilde, many that come directly from his works. As ...

About the author

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. He later lived in London and married Constance Lloyd there in 1884. Wilde was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazinein 1890. He published a revised and expanded edition in 1891 in response to negative reviews which criticised the book's immorality. Wilde became famous through of the immense success of his plays such as Lady Windemere's Fan(1892), An Ideal Husband(1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest(1895).

In 1985, after a public scandal involving Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour in Reading Gaol for 'gross indecency'. His poem The Ballad of Reading Gaolwas based on his experiences in prison and was published in 1898. After his release, Wilde never lived in England again and died in Paris on 30 November 1900. He is buried in P re Lachaise cemetery

Bibliographic information

• Title: Nothing...Except My Genius; Penguin classics
• Author: Oscar Wilde
• Editor: Alastair Rolfe
• Compiled by: Alastair Rolfe
• Contributor: Stephen Fry
• Publisher: Penguin Adult, 1997
• ISBN: 0140436936, 9780140436938
• Length: 81 pages
• Subjects: Literary Collections / Essays