Description: The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest provides facing-page commentary on Oscar Wilde's greatest play. Editor Nicholas Frankel highlights the play's relation to the author's homosexuality and to the climate of sexual repression that led to Wilde's imprisonment just months after the play's London opening in 1895.
Brief description: Nicholas Frankel has published many books about Oscar Wilde, including Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde, The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde, The Invention of Oscar Wilde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. He is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Review Quotes: Frankel's command of all the relevant materials--textual, literary-critical, historical, biographical--is impressive, and he puts that knowledge to splendid use in The Annotated Importance of Being Earnest.--Stephen Arata, University of Virginia