Series Information:
Collected Critical Heritage II

This set comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

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.

"I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty", one of Oscar Wilde's characters says. Another remarks, "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train". Before Wilde himself was brought down in one of the most sensational scandals of his time, he was sought after for his flamboyant personality, his scintillating conversation and his sophisticated wit. "I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation" captures the best of those witicisms at which Oscar Wilde excelled. Naturally aphoristic, his remarks are among some of the most familiar in the English language, encompassing a wide range of subjects and people; there is hardly a topic for which he didn't have a witty comment, from pleasure ("Pleasure is what we take from others, duty what we expect from others, and genius what we deny to others") to dying ("I an dying, as I have lived, beyond my means"), from fiction ("Anyone can write a three-volumed novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature") to sentimentality ("One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing"). This book also contains selections from personal letters - letters filled with poignant remarks on his life and on the human condition. Karl Beckson has selected more than 1,000 quotations on subjects from absinthe to Zola. With its comprehensive citation of source material, "I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation" is not only a boon to writers, but a lovingly crafted portrait of one of history's most quotable figures.

For all those who have become entangled in the ever-burgeoning sphere of confusing literary terminology, Professors Karl Beckson and Arthur Ganz provide clear and entertaining explanations, in this, their now-classic reference work. From abecedarius to zeugma, they gracefully guide the reader through the intricacies of literary forms and ideas. Over the years, Literary Terms has been revised and enlarged as Professors Beckson and Ganz have added new entries from recent literary theory and scholarship, bringing the total number of entries to over 900. It is an indispensable asset for understanding such concepts as deconstruction, Russian Formalism, feminist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, semiotics, and the surfeit of others that have emerged in the ongoing process of interpreting literature.

Throughout the text, numerous helpful examples drawn from a multitude of sources—nursery rhymes to Shakespeare—clarify the concepts discussed. In addition, not only the terminology itself but also the historical and philosophical background necessary to a fuller understanding of any work is examined. The result is a readable dictionary that illuminates as much as it delights, providing essential information for the student as well as the professional.