COMPLETE LETTERS OF OSCAR WILDE, THE

On November 30, 1900, Wilde, 46, died in self-exile in Paris. This centenary volume of his correspondence, edited by Wilde's grandson (Holland) and the late editor of earlier volumes of Wilde's letters, includes many Hart-Davis omitted from previous volumes, explaining that they were "often to unidentified people, of no literary, biographical, or other interest." This book furnishes all of these and more. Of the 200 that appear for the first time, the most moving may be a brief letter to Scottish writer-adventurer R.B. Cunninghame Graham, to whom Wilde writes of "the many prisons of lifeDprisons of stone, prisons of passion, prisons of intellect, prisons of morality, and the rest." (By 1898 he had experienced them all.) Printed in full are also some letters previously available only as extracts. The most significant and amusing may be Wilde's original scenario for The Importance of Being Earnest, sent, when desperate for cash, to actor-manager George Alexander. Almost everything in it but the governess, Miss Prism, and the rivalry between estranged brothers, fails to survive in the play as performed.