Product details

Imprint: Renard Press
ISBN: 9781804472132
Paperback • 128pp • £9.99
129 mm x 198 mm
11/11/26
Thema: FBC, FC, DDA

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The Importance of Doing Nothing

The Critic as Artist and The Decay of Lying

Oscar Wilde

ISBN: 9781804472132
Paperback • 128pp
Published 11 November 2026

£9.99

Free UK delivery on orders over £25

Better remembered today for his ground-breaking anti-ageing novel and dramatic masterpieces, still today Oscar Wilde is a name inseparable from the Aestheticism movement. But while many will have Wilde wit or aphorisms on the tip of their tongue, few have as broad a view of his thoughts on aesthetics.

Published together here are two of Wilde’s foremost essays – dialogues between a Gilbert and an Ernest, a Vivian and a Cyril – setting out his ideals. Penned as two dialogues on art, criticism and literature, on the triumph of aesthetics over realism, these pieces are richly infused with the comedic glint of observation and subversion so recognisable in Wilde’s work, and can be enjoyed as both comment on art and art in and of themselves.

About the author

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) was an author, poet and one of the best-known playwrights in the English canon. His private life is widely discussed, since his sexuality and relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas led him to his being convicted for ‘gross indecency’. He was sentenced to two years’ hard labour, and while in prison he wrote De Profundis, a letter to Douglas describing the trials of his incarceration, which was eventually published in expurgated form. He is best remembered today for his short-story collections for children, The Happy Prince and A House of Pomegranates, his poetry, especially The Ballad of Reading Gaol, his novel Dorian Gray and his plays – particularly Salome and his drawing-room and society comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest.

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