Reading Order
The Importance of Being Earnest Reading Order
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) by Oscar Wilde is the supreme achievement of the English comic tradition — the funniest play in the language, the most perfect theatrical mechanism ever built, and (for those who know where to look) a devastating critique of Victorian society concealed behind the most exquisite surface of wit and artifice in the drama. Algernon Moncrieff and his friend Jack Worthing (who calls himself 'Ernest' in town) are entangled with Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, both of whom are in love with men named Ernest on the strength of the name alone; the discovery that Jack was found as an infant in a handbag at Victoria Station ('the Brighton line') by a local author of improving fiction for the young; and the triple revelation at the play's end that establishes, simultaneously, that everyone is related to everyone else and that Jack's name is actually Ernest. Wilde called it 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,' and the formula works in both directions: the play's surface is perfectly trivial, and the people it addresses are perfectly serious — which is to say, everyone who takes Victorian society at its word.
Where to start
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) — the complete three-act version (restored in the 1950s from Wilde's manuscript; the original 1895 production was cut to four acts). Best Wilde reading order: The Picture of Dorian Gray → The Importance of Being Earnest → An Ideal Husband → Lady Windermere's Fan → A Woman of No Importance → De Profundis → The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Complete The Importance of Being Earnest Book List
- 1Buy
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde·1895·The supreme achievement of the English comic tradition — the funniest play in the language and the most perfect theatrical mechanism ever built. Algernon, Jack, Gwendolen, Cecily, Lady Bracknell, and the handbag at Victoria Station. Wilde's masterpiece premiered on Valentine's Day 1895; he was arrested for gross indecency two months later - 2Buy
An Ideal Husband
Oscar Wilde·1895·Wilde's companion social comedy — Sir Robert Chiltern's political career and the secret at its foundation, threatened by Mrs. Cheveley's blackmail. An Ideal Husband ran simultaneously with The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895 and is Wilde's most politically serious play: it asks the same questions about Victorian hypocrisy but with genuine stakes rather than the purely comic mechanism of Earnest - 3Buy
Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw·1913·Shaw's companion in the tradition of the British play that makes the social comedy do philosophical work — Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, the question of what class means and what language makes it. Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest are companion critiques of the English class system: Wilde's through the mechanism of pure wit and artifice; Shaw's through the mechanism of the social experiment - 4Buy
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde·1890·The companion Wilde work — Dorian's portrait, his corruption, and his end. The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest are the two pillars of Wilde's achievement: the novel shows the dark side of the Wildean aesthetic project (the portrait makes literal what the wit conceals); the play shows the perfect surface - 5Buy
Lady Windermere's Fan
Oscar Wilde·1892·The earlier social comedy — Lady Windermere's discovery of what her husband has been doing with Mrs. Erlynne, and the revelation of Mrs. Erlynne's identity. Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest are companion explorations of Victorian social hypocrisy: the earlier play takes the social hypocrisy seriously; Earnest converts it into the material of pure comedy - 6Buy
The Rivals
Richard Brinsley Sheridan·1775·The eighteenth-century precursor in the tradition of the English comedy of manners — Captain Absolute, Mrs. Malaprop, and the romantic complications of Bath. The Rivals and The Importance of Being Earnest are the two great peaks of the English comic tradition: both are organized around romantic complications, misunderstandings about identity, and a social world whose conventions are simultaneously the source of the comedy and its target - 7Buy
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell·1853·Gaskell's companion in the tradition of the literary investigation of English social convention and the comedy it generates — the ladies of Cranford and their rituals. Cranford and The Importance of Being Earnest are companion investigations of the English social world and the way that convention can be both oppressive and generating, both the material of comedy and its instrument - 8Buy
De Profundis
Oscar Wilde·1905·Wilde's long letter from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas — his account of their relationship, his downfall, and the spiritual reckoning he arrived at in prison. De Profundis is the dark companion to The Importance of Being Earnest: where the play is the perfect surface of Wildean wit, the letter is the reality that the surface conceals; reading both shows what Wilde's art was protecting him from having to say
The Importance of Being Earnest — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Importance of Being Earnest about?
The Importance of Being Earnest is the story of two young men — Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing — who have both invented fictional alter egos (Algernon has invented an invalid friend named 'Bunbury' whose ill-health requires constant country visits; Jack calls himself 'Ernest' in town while being 'Jack' in the country) and the complications that arise when their romantic lives make the fictions impossible to maintain. Both Gwendolen Fairfax (with whom Jack is in love) and Cecily Cardew (with whom Algernon falls in love) believe they are in love with men named 'Ernest,' finding the name itself irresistible. The play's resolution — involving a handbag at Victoria Station, a three-volume novel, a General Moncrieff, and the simultaneous discovery that everyone is related and that Jack's name has always been Ernest — is Wilde's demonstration that the mechanism of Victorian social convention can be made to produce pure comedy when operated at sufficient speed and artifice.
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