An Annotated Wilde

facts are omitted altogether. Despite his intentions to reach general readers, Gillon has overestimated their familiarity with Conrad's works, as well as with Conrad criticism. The chronology and the lengthy, well-arranged bibliography give this volume some usefulness as a quick-reference tool, as do the opening biographical chapter and some review of critical disputes about Conrad. The public will find the text rough sailing, however, and Conrad scholars will find little here that has not been more thoroughly and coherently presented elsewhere. Kathryn Rentz University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 6. AN ANNOTATED WILDE H. Montgomery Hyde, ed. The Annotated Oscar Wilde. New York: Clarkson N. Potter; London: Orbis, 1982. $25.00 If annotated editions of such works as Gulliver's Travels, The Ancient Mariner , Alice in Wonderland, and even I'ncle Tom's Cabin and Mother Goose found their share of readers, the publishers of this latest addition to an ever-expanding genre must have reasoned, why not an annotated edition of the works of Wilde? To edit the work, who would be better qualified than H. Montgomery Hyde, the distinguished critic and Wilde biographer? And if the entire undertaking were to be profusely illustrated, neatly printed, and carefully bound, it could not help but be a commercial success. There is no refuting logic. The Annotated Oscar Wilde, unfortunately, is a disappointing book. Hyde's selections are appropriate, the texts authoritative. His introductions to each of the five selections making up this volume are lively and informative. Still, the volume is far less than one interested in Wilde might expect. Granted, Hyde could not include everything Wilde wrote, but he fails to explain why he has chosen certain works and excluded others, a few that Wilde devotees might have preferred, such as "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," "The Decay of Lying," or "The Critic as Artist." Nor does he account for the nature and extent of his annotations. Though there are interesting tidbits of information here and there, and even a nugget or two, among the more than 1,000 annotations, they are obviously not directed to the scholar or enthusiastic reader of Wilde. Most of what has been annotated is meant for the general reader or the still-to-be enlightened undergraduate. As for the selections themselves, they have been drawn from Wilde's fiction, poetry, dramas, essays and letters. Among the works of fiction can be found all of The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," "The Happy Prince," "The Selfish Giant," and a few other popular stories. There is a good sampling of Wilde's poetry, including the entire "Ballad of Reading Gaol." Of the nine plays that Wilde wrote between 1879 and 1894, three are reprinted in full, The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, and Salomé. Among the essays 211 and lectures can be found "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," one of Wilde's more lumpish attempts "to startle and excite talk," as a critic for the Spectator once commented; "The Irish Poets of '48," which Hyde has reconstructed from contemporary -newspaper reports and manuscript notes; and "Impressions of America," reprinted from the limited edition of 1906 and not printed again until now, having even been omitted from Wilde's first Collected Edition (1908). And finally, in addition to the complete De Pr o fundÃ-s, there are four letters to Robert Ross and one to the Daily Chronicle of 24 March 1898, in which Wilde protested the cruelties of prison life. In a volume of this magnitude—almost 500 oversized pages (8" χ 11")—there are bound to be certain errors. Hyde, for example, labels Douglas' poem "Two Loves" a sonnet; it is not. He states that Wilde subvened publication of John Gray's Silverpoints; he did not. In a list of Further Readings (which lists only sixteen works and is too short to label a bibliography), he refers to one study of Wilde as being published in Lotowa, New Jersey; he means Totowa. But much to his credit, Hyde's errors, factual, judgmental, and typographical, are at a minimum. If one wished to carp, fault could be found with many of...