Flamboyant fin-de-diecle literary figure Oscar Wilde was a dazzling personality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparkling comedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written for the English stage.

Here in one volume are his immensely popular novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; his last literary work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a product of his own prison experience; and four complete plays: Lady Windermere's Fan, his first dramatic success; An Ideal Husband, which continued to poke fun at conventional morality; The Importance of Being Ernest, his finest comedy; and Salome, a portrait of uncontrollable love originally written in French, now in a new translation by Richard Ellmann.