Oscar Wilde Sample

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Oscar Willde
By Enrest Newman

Narrated by Jennifer Fournier

Ernest Newman, most celebrated today as a music critic, composed his essay on Oscar Wilde in 1895. Although at that time, Wilde was embroiled in the scandal which eventually led to his imprisonment, Newman makes little reference to Wilde's private life, and instead concentrates on Wilde the artist.

In particular Newman focuses on Wilde's use of wit and paradox, and describes his aim as follows:

My object in writing this article is rather to call attention to less-known qualities of Mr. Wilde's genius, and to show my readers, if I can, that he is not the lackadaisical dandy they have always imagined him to be, but one of the best of contemporary critics and poets, with a style like polished agate, and a mind that combines most curiously extreme sensuousness with extreme virility of grasp and penetration.