Beautiful Idiots And Brilliant Lunatics

London's forgotten scandals, secrets and personalities from the twentieth century, told by the writer of the popular blog Another Nickel in the Machine.

Twenty-five more strange and fascinating true-life tales featuring the greatest city in the world.

"Beauty, Blissfulness & Tragedy: The Life of Oscar Wilde" is a biography of the famous Irish writer, poet and dramatist, written by his friend Frank Harris. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, Wilde became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays and poetry, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde is a central figure in aesthetic writing. His controversial, open lifestyle was the reason he was charged and eventually convicted for the crime of sodomy.

'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,' said Samuel Johnson in 1777. Since then the capital has been characterised variously as a 'riddle', a 'cesspool' and a 'modern Babylon', and both Londoners and visitors alike have continued to share their candid views of a great city in a variety of literary forms.This compact gift book is packed full of witty, scandalous and entertaining quotations about this famous city from the Middle Ages to the current decade.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - [The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests. At the top of the staircase stands LADY CHILTERN, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age. She receives the guests as they come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large eighteenth-century French tapestry - representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher- that is stretched on the staircase wall. On the right is the entrance to the music-room. The sound of a string quartette is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms. MRS. MARCHMONT and LADY BASIL-DON, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa. They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau would have loved to paint them.]

Wilde's works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. He wrote tender fairy stories for children employing all his grace, artistry and wit, of which the best-known is The Happy Prince. Counterpoints to this were his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which shocked and outraged many readers of his day, and his stories for adults which exhibited his fascination with the relations between serene art and decadent life. Wilde took London by storm with his plays, particularly his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. His essays - in particular De Profundis- and his Ballad of Reading Gaol, both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection of the works of one of the most exciting writers of the late nineteenth century.

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘An Ideal Husband’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde’. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Wilde includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily. eBook features: * The complete unabridged text of ‘An Ideal Husband’ * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Wilde’s works * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles