The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume I: Poems and Poems in Prose

This volume of Poems and Poems in Prose inaugurates the Oxford English Texts Complete Works of Oscar Wilde , which will for the first time provide students of Wilde with scholarly and textually accurate texts of his complete oeuvre. In it, Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson provide reliable texts of Wilde's 119 poems and poems in prose, including 21 never published in his lifetime, together with the publishing history of each poem, locations of manuscripts, all known variants and emendations, and a detailed commentary on allusions and echoes, imagery, and points of biographical interest. The introduction by Ian Small, co-general editor of the Complete Works, discusses the historical context in which Wilde wrote poetry and the conditions surrounding its publication.