A New Edition of Wilde

Book Reviews Carpenter was an exemplary figure in the transition between Victorianism and Modernism. Forster implies in his frequently cited Terminal Note to Maurice that, without his visit to Carpenter's rural home, Milthorpe, Maurice might not have been written: "It was the direct result of a visit[;] ... he was a believer in the Love of Comrades. ... It was this last aspect of him that attracted me in my loneliness. For a short time he seemed to hold the key to every trouble. ... I then returned to Harrogate . . . and immediately began to write Maurice." Elsewhere, Forster has written that it was Carpenter's personal presence that was essential to his impact: "It was the influence which used to be called magnetic, and which emanated from religious teachers and seers, it depended on contact and couldn't be written down on paper, and its effect was to increase one's vitality, so that one went away better able to do one's work." The useful collection under review probably cannot—and does not intend to—convey Carpenter's personal effect on the artists, socialists, homosexuals, visionaries, and troubled souls who made the pilgrimage to Milthorpe. Its purpose is to present a multidimensional analysis of Carpenter's ideas and of the radical milieu in which he was a participant . But, while the contribution of these essays to the study of lateVictorian radicalism is to be commended, readers should remind themselves that the radiating influences of the spirit of a "seer" are not easily measured. June Perry Levine University of Nebraska, Lincoln A New Edition of Wilde Oscar Wilde. Isobel Murray, ed. The Oxford Authors. Frank Kermode, general, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. xxiv + 636 pp. Cloth $39.95 Paper $14.95 THE PUBLICATION of a selected edition of Oscar Wilde in the Oxford Authors series allows readers and teachers the welcome choice of well annotated and partially authoritative versions of some major texts arranged categorically by genre. We continue to need an edition of Wilde's complete works based on modern editorial principles and on a complete survey of manuscripts, drafts, and published texts. Until one is completed, Murray's text begins to fill the gap; it should be recommended for purchase by university and college libraries. Its annotations empha469 ELT: VOLUME 34:4, 1991 size the classical, English, and continental literary contexts of Wilde's writing; they provide useful glosses and commentary on the texts, but they, too, need to be supplemented by notes reflecting Wilde's reading in the sciences and social sciences. Any selected edition has to make hard choices about inclusion and exclusion. Murray has favored Wilde's fiction and drama. The fiction section includes one short story ("Lord Arthur Savile's Crime"), two fairy tales ("The Happy Prince" and "The Devoted Friend"), and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde's criticism is represented by the two major dialogues, "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist." There are four plays: Salome (as translated by Lord Alfred Douglas and amended by Wilde), Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Three poems in verse, "The Harlot's House," "The Sphinx," and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" are included, as are three prose poems, "The Artist," "The Disciple," and "The House of Judgment." The collection concludes with the aphorisms in "A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated" and "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young." The editor has contributed the standard apparatus for the Oxford Authors Series: an introduction and note on the text, a chronology, a short list of further reading, and most important, 61 pages of explanatory notes. Murray's "Note on the Text" explains her basic editorial principle as use of "the last printed text which was overseen or accepted by Wilde: in practice, this often also means the first volume edition. In the case of works which appeared first as contributions to periodicals, the earlier printed versions have been compared, and major changes only are signalled ." However, Murray adds, "the huge task of comparing different manuscript versions and drafts has not been attempted." She incorporates the texts already established in her Oxford...