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Cover of The Importance of Being Earnest

Classic Fiction

The Importance of Being Earnest

A comedy skewering Victorian high society.

First published
1895
Length
20,555 words
Reading time
About 1 hr 26 min
Language
English (UK)

About the book

The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s most popular play today, enduring thanks to its easy humor, witty dialog, and clever satire. It was also one of his more successful plays, despite its first run being prematurely ended after only 86 performances. The main characters pretend to be other people in order to escape social obligations, with the resulting confusion of identities driving the plot and the humor behind it.

Earnest also holds the sad distinction of being Wilde’s last published play. A feud with an aristocrat whose son was Wilde’s lover led to a court case revealing Wilde as a homosexual—a crime in those days, and punishable by imprisonment with hard labor.

First published 1895; the Read4Max reading text contains approximately 20,555 words arranged in 6 navigable sections.

About the author

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) is described by Wikidata as Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete (1854-1900), with citizenship or national association recorded as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Ireland, United Kingdom, and France.

Recorded occupations include poet, playwright, short story writer, children's writer, novelist, and writer. Languages recorded for Oscar Wilde include English, French, Latin, Ancient Greek, and German. The structured record associates Oscar Wilde with Aestheticism and Decadent movement. Wikidata lists The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Canterville Ghost, The Soul of Man under Socialism, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol among Oscar Wilde's notable works. Open Library identifies The Picture of Dorian Gray as a leading work in its author record. Open Library catalogs 5546 works under this author record. The Read4Max catalog currently includes A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, Children’s Stories, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, Poetry, and The Importance of Being Earnest under Oscar Wilde's authorship.