This is the second volume in the Oxford English Texts edition of the works of Oscar Wilde. It presents for the first time the complete textual history of one of the most famous love letters ever written. It argues, however, that Wilde's prison document may be seen not just as the basis of a letter, but also as an unfinished literary work which he intended for public consumption at some future date. Such a case is made by placing in the public domain, often for the first time, a number of different works, derived from different texts, each of which bears witness to Wilde's multiple intentions...

This book studies changes in the practice of literary criticism in nineteenth-century Britain and locates those changes within wider movements in intellectual culture. The growth of knowledge and its subsequent institutionalization in universities produced new forms of intellectual authority. Small examines these processes in a wide variety of disciplines, including economics, historiography, sociology, psychology, and philosophical aesthetics, and explores their impact upon literary criticism.

A materialist account of Wilde's writing career, based on publishing contracts and other documentation as well as detailed evidence of how he composed, this book argues that Wilde was not driven by an oppositional politics, nor was he an aesthetic "purist." Rather, he was thoroughly immersed in the contemporary "commodification of culture" in which books became product. This study surveys his writing practices across the whole of the oeuvre, and radically reinterprets the significance of his revision and "plagiarism."

The modern published editions in which we read the great literary works of the distant and recent past almost invariably embody the work of a textual editor. Recent literary theory has called into question most of the assumptions on which the practice of textual editing has historically depended. This volume of essays, written by practicing textual editors and scholars, addresses the practical implications of these theoretical issues, taking a variety of texts as examples for the particular editorial problems they pose. The works of authors as various as Shakespeare and John Clare, Samuel...

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. Josephine Guy and Ian Small set this so-called "crisis in English" within the larger context of disciplinary knowledge. They examine the teaching of English and literary studies in the United States and Britain, and argue that the attempt by some radical critics to politicize the discipline has profound consequences for the nature of English studies. In the process they demystify issues and arguments that have often been obscured by jargon and polemic.

The current debate about the nature of English studies has questioned the status of English as a discipline. Josephine Guy and Ian Small set this so-called "crisis in English" within the larger context of disciplinary knowledge. They examine the teaching of English and literary studies in the United States and Britain, and argue that the attempt by some radical critics to politicize the discipline has profound consequences for the nature of English studies. In the process they demystify issues and arguments that have often been obscured by jargon and polemic.

In this important new book, Guy and Small develop a new account of literary creativity in the late nineteenth century, one that combines concepts generated by text-theorists concerning the embodied nature of textuality with the empirical insights of text-editors and book historians.

This edition collects all of Oscar Wilde's short fiction, principally The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891), and Wilde's second volume of fairy stories, A House of Pomegranates (1891). It also includes the first full edition of Wilde's expanded version of 'The Portrait of Mr W.H.', unpublished in Wilde's lifetime.