Plays
Subtitle: Lady Windermere's Fan; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest; Salomé
By: Oscar Wilde
Series: Penguin Plays, 600
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: December 30, 1954
Place of publication: Harmondsworth, England
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780140480160
Description: This Penguin collection contains Oscar Wilde's five wittiest and best known plays. He himself described **Lady Windermere's Fan** his first great stage success, as 'one of those modern drawing-room plays with pink lampshades'. Its combination of polished social drama and corruscatingly witty dialogue was repeated in **A Woman of No Importance** and **An Ideal Husband** both of which were enthusiastically received by the public but savaged, much to Wilde's delight, by affronted critics. His greatest play, **The Importance of Being Earnest** was first produced in 1895. Wilde wrote of it: 'It is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it has its philosophy . . . that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all of the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality'.

This volume also includes Lord Alfred Douglas's translation of **Salomé** a short drama which Wilde wrote in French.
Notes: In Penguin Books *The Importance of Being Earnest* and *Lady Windermere's Fan* were first published (together) in 1940; 
*Salomé*, *A Woman of No Importance*, and *An Ideal Husband* (the three together) in 1948
The five plays first published in one volume 1954
Reprinted 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971

Set in Monotype Bembo
Table of contents: title: Lady Windermere's Fan
pagenum: n8; title: A Woman of No Importance
pagenum: 73; title: An Ideal Husband
pagenum: 147; title: The Importance of Being Earnest
pagenum: 247; title: Salomé
pagenum: 315