A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies

Before Oscar Wilde became the playwright of "The Importance of Being Earnest," he was the sharpest pen in Victorian London. This collection gathers his reviews and essays from the Pall Mall Gazette, revealing a critical mind that could dismantle a mediocre novel with the same precision it celebrated a great one. Here Wilde writes on Keats, on the architecture of Rome, on the nature of art itself, applying his famous wit not to society's follies but to the serious business of evaluating literature and culture. The pieces on Keats are particularly striking, full of genuine reverence for poetry delivered in Wilde's most lapidary prose. What emerges is Wilde the serious artist, not just the dinner-table wit, proving that his famous cleverness was always in service of genuine artistic conviction.