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Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)

A handsome Perennial Classics edition of America's favourite play, Our Town, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

First produced and published in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize–winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners has become an American classic and is Thornton Wider's most renowned and most frequently performed play.

This Perennial Classics edition includes a foreword by Donald Margulies and contains an afterword with documentary material edited by Tappan Wilder.

The Importance of Being Earnest

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader‚s notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.

Oscar WildeÂ’s madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and loversÂ’ entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a mainstay of the high school curriculum for decades.

Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gewndolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack’s ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack’s country home on the same weekend—the "rivals" to fight for Ernest’s undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds—pandemonium breaks loose.

Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!

The Importance of Being Earnest (Dover Thrift Editions)

A collection of literature anthologies and reference books for Key Stage 3 onwards.

Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins Classics)

The Importance of Being Earnest (Penguin Popular Classics)

The Importance of Being Earnest (Norton Critical Editions)

The text of this Norton Critical Edition of The Importance of Being Earnest is the established three-act version. Originally in four acts, Wilde shortened it to three at the urging of George Alexander, the owner of the St. James Theatre and first actor to play Jack Worthing. The play is accompanied by explanatory annotations and by an appendix of excised portions.

"Backgrounds" includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Joseph Donohue, Regenia Gagnier, and Karl Beckson.

"Reviews and Reactions" collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, among them George Bernard Shaw's famous dissenting view and the American assessment by H. F. "Essays in Criticism" includes six diverse assessments of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Camille Paglia, Christopher Craft, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Peter Raby, and Richard Haslam.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

An Ideal Husband (Dover Thrift Editions)

Salome (Dover Thrift Editions)

An Audio version of Oscar Wilde's famous play; originally produced by the CBC.

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (Enriched Classics Series)

Wilde's classic comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest, and his other popular plays -- Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and Salome -- challenged comtemporary notions of sex and sensibility, class and cultural identity.

This Enriched Classic Edition includes:

• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information

• A chronology of the author's life and work

• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations

• Detailed explanatory notes

• Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work

• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson

The Skin of Our Teeth: A Play (Perennial Classics)

A timeless statement about human foibles . . . and human endurance, this beautiful new edition features Wilder's unpublished production notes, diary entries, and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder.

Time magazine called The Skin of Our Teeth "a sort of Hellzapoppin' with brains," as it broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire (among other styles), Thornton Wilder departs from his studied use of nostalgia and sentiment in Our Town to have an Eternal Family narrowly escape one disaster after another, from ancient times to the present. Meet George and Maggie Antrobus (married only 5,000 years); their two children, Gladys and Henry (perfect in every way!); and their maid, Sabina (the ageless vamp) as they overcome ice, flood, and war -- by the skin of their teeth.