Jack Worthing gets antsy living at his country estate. As an excuse, he spins tales of his rowdy brother Earnest living in London. When Jack rushes to the city to confront his "brother," he's free to become Earnest and live a different lifestyle. In London, his best friend, Algernon, begins to suspect Earnest is leading a double life. Earnest confesses that his real name is Jack and admits the ruse has become tricky as two women have become enchanted with the idea of marrying Earnest. On a whim, Algernon also pretends to be Earnest and encounters the two women as they meet at the estate. With two Earnests who aren't really earnest and two women in love with little more than a name, this play is a classic comedy of errors. This is an unabridged version of Oscar Wilde's English play, first published in 1899.

Portia and her cousin Julian discover adventure in a hidden colony of forgotten summer houses on the shores of a swampy lake.

Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. Wilde’s classic comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest, a satire of Victorian social hypocrisy and considered Wilde’s greatest dramatic achievement, and his other popular plays—Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, and Salome—challenged contemporary notions of sex and sensibility, class and cultural identity. Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author’s personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research. Read with confidence.

Familiar and resonant, Cline's collection takes readers into a private landscape of science fiction, pop culture, and pornography. Ernest Cline is a geek, novelist, poet, and screenwriter based in Austin, Texas. In addition to winning poetry slams, Cline is known for screenwriting "Fanboys," released in 2009. He also recently sold the film rights to his latest book, "Armada."

The fullest, most textural, most accurate—most human—account of Oscar Wilde's unique and dazzling life—based on extensive new research and newly discovered materials, from Wilde's personal letters and transcripts of his first trial to newly uncovered papers of his early romantic (and dangerous) escapades and the two-year prison term that shattered his soul and his life. "Simply the best modern biography of Wilde." —Evening Standard Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde's life, returning the man "to his times, and to the facts," giving us Wilde's own experience as he experienced it. Here, fully and richly portrayed, is Wilde's Irish childhood; a dreamy, aloof boy; a stellar classicist at boarding school; a born entertainer with a talent for comedy and a need for an audience; his years at Oxford, a brilliant undergraduate punctuated by his reckless disregard for authority . . . his arrival in London, in 1878, "already noticeable everywhere" . . . his ten-year marriage to Constance Lloyd, the father of two boys; Constance unwittingly welcoming young men into the household who became Oscar's lovers, and dying in exile at the age of thirty-nine . . . Wilde's development as a playwright. . . becoming the high priest of the aesthetic movement; his successes . . . his celebrity. . . and in later years, his irresistible pull toward another—double—life, in flagrant defiance and disregard of England's strict sodomy laws ("the blackmailer's charter"); the tragic story of his fall that sent him to prison for two years at hard labor, destroying his life and shattering his soul.

The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde offers an essential introduction to one of the theatre's most important and enigmatic writers. Although a general overview, the volume also offers some of the latest thinking on the dramatist and his impact on the twentieth century. Part One places Wilde's work within the cultural and historical context of his time and includes an opening essay by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland. Further chapters also examine Wilde and the Victorians and his image as a Dandy. Part Two looks at Wilde's essential work as playwright and general writer, including his poetry, critiques, and fiction, and provides detailed analysis of such key works as Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest among others. The third group of essays examines the themes and factors which shaped Wilde's work and includes Wilde and his view of the Victorian woman, Wilde's sexual identities, and interpreting Wilde on stage. This 1997 volume also contains a detailed chronology of Wilde's work, a guide to further reading, and illustrations from important productions.