Oscar Wilde's haunting classic of a never-aging man, and his ever-graying portrait, is one of literature's finest examples of gothic horror. With three more Wilde short stories, "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime", "The Happy Prince", "The Birthday of the Infanta" and a new introduction by Gary Schmidgall, author of The Strangest Wilde, this is the finest edition available.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854. He was an outstanding student of classics at Trinity College, and, in 1874, entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize with his poem "Ravenna" (1878). An early leader of the Aesthetic Movement, which advanced the concept of "art for art's sake," Wilde became a prominent personality in literary and social circles. His volume of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), was followed by The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and The House of Pomegranates (1892). However, it was not until his play Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) was presented to the public that he became widely famous. A Woman of No Importance (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) confirmed his stature as a dramatist. In 1895 he brought libel action against the Marquis of Queensbury, who had accused him of the crime of sodomy. He lost, however, and was sentenced under the Criminal Law Amendment Act to two years' imprisonment with hard labor. Upon his release in 1897, he settled in France, where he wrote his most powerful and enduring poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898). Wilde never returned to England; he died in Paris on November 30, 1900. Gary Schmidgall is the author of The Stranger Wilde: Interpreting Oscar as well as Shakespeare and the Poet's Life. He lives in New York City.