Oscar Wilde in outline by Charles Joseph Finger
The saga of Silver Bend by J. E. Grinstead is a novel written in the early 20th century. It likely delivers a Western saga set around the boomtown of Silver Bend, following a rugged protagonist—perhaps a lawman, prospector, or rancher—through conflicts over land, loyalty, and frontier justice, with themes of honor, ambition, and hard-won redemption. The opening of the provided excerpt instead presents a concise critical portrait of Oscar Wilde’s art and
persona, arguing that public scandal long distorted his literary standing. It weighs his achievements—minor as poet except for a few standout works, uneven in fiction but memorable for a single novel, secure as dramatist, enduring as essayist—then traces defining traits: a love of paradox, a taste for display, and a partisan allegiance to Baudelairean aesthetics. Using brief examples and quotations, it shows how Wilde shocked convention (on sympathy, lying, and “moral lessons”), defended art’s independence from morality, and attacked American commercialism while urging self-culture. It sketches his fiction as decorative and perverse in design (from the contrived crime of Lord Arthur Savile to the decadent catalogues of Dorian Gray), notes that his fairy tales were really for adults, and credits his stage triumphs to dazzling wit and crafted theatricality. It also highlights his generous, lucid criticism, his affinities with thinkers like Chuang Tzu, and his cool, art-first approach in essays such as the study of the murderer Wainewright. Overall, the section frames Wilde as a brilliant stylist whose contradictions were central to both his life and his work. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Finger, Charles Joseph, 1869-1941 |
|---|---|
| Editor | Haldeman-Julius, E. (Emanuel), 1888-1951 |
| Title | Oscar Wilde in outline |
| Original Publication | Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1923. |
| Series Title | Ten cent pocket series ; no. 442 |
| Series Title | Little blue book ; no. 442 |
| Credits | Tim Miller, Terry Jeffress, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PR: Language and Literatures: English literature |
| Subject | Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900 -- Criticism and interpretation |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77494 |
| Release Date | Dec 18, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 757 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |