IT is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde’s early verses may be of
interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always
popular _Ballad of Reading Gaol_, also included in this volume. The
poems were first collected by their author when he was twenty-sex years
old, and though never, until recently, well received by the critics, have
survived the test of NINE editions. Readers will be able to make for
themselves the obvious and striking contrasts between these first and
last phases of Oscar Wilde’s literary activity. The intervening period
was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and
criticism.