Art and Decoration: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies

Oscar Wilde was one of the most influential writers on art and design in the late 19th century. Alongside his acclaimed plays, novel and short stories, he wrote and lectured extensively on the subject. This exquisite centenary facsimile edition of a posthumous collection that was first published in 1920 brings together some of his most significant writings on art, craft, design, fashion, and decoration. Among them are musings on the nature of beauty and utility; what makes an artist and what does an artist make; the importance of handicrafts over machine art; radical ideas on the state of fashion; how to decorate one’s home; the ‘American invasion’ of English society; the various qualities of models of different nationalities; and the rise of historical criticism. Selections of his celebrated epigrams - or ‘phrases and philosophies for the use of the young’, as he put it - is a testament to the brilliant, incisive wit and flamboyant style for which Wilde is known. This beautiful volume, the only book devoted to Wilde’s writings on art, will delight, enchant, and amuse.