Audiobook · read by volunteers
Aphorisms
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
Read by Carl Manchester · 2 chapters · 11 min
About the book
Oscar Wilde could turn a thought upside down in a single sentence, and these aphorisms show him at his most dazzling. In 1894 he published two small collections in magazines: A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated, and Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young. They are by turns witty, intellectual, contrary and sometimes plainly mischievous, with remarks on art, morality, youth, age and the habits of society. Each line is polished like a jewel and invites you to disagree, or to laugh and then to wonder whether he meant it. The two collections form the two chapters of this short recording, read by a single LibriVox volunteer, and the whole lasts only a few minutes. It is a perfect little sample of Wilde’s voice. Listen to it more than once, and the jokes keep their edge.
Introduction
Oscar Wilde lived from 1854 to 1900, and his name is associated with a certain kind of witty paradox. He was a playwright, a novelist and an essayist, and his talk was famous in London society. In 1894, he published two collections of aphorisms in two very different places. The first, A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated, appeared in the Saturday Review, a respectable London newspaper. The second, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, appeared in The Chameleon, a magazine published by students at Oxford.
The sayings are sometimes witty, sometimes intellectual, often counter-intuitive and occasionally obscure. Many of them play with received ideas and turn them upside down. They give a distillation of the attitude he showed in his plays and in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had appeared a few years before.
The Chameleon is also remembered because one of its issues was later used against Wilde at his trial in 1895. That context adds a more serious note to these light pages.
This recording has two chapters, one for each collection, and it lasts roughly a dozen minutes. A single LibriVox volunteer reads it. It is a quick and pleasing way to spend a few minutes with one of the sharpest tongues in English literature, and the sentences can be heard over and over. Because the sayings are so short, they can be heard as a sequence of small surprises, one after another, or taken one at a time. They are a good introduction to Wilde’s style for anyone who has not yet read his plays, and a fine reminder of why he is so often quoted.
Public domain
Oscar Wilde died in 1900: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive