Lady Windermere's Fan

Resumen del libro

"The Sunday Times" reported that on the first night of "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892), Wilde appeared on stage after the final curtain call and told the audience how pleased he was that they evidently liked the piece as much as he did himself. The play brought him wealth and cemented his reputation for brilliant wit and devil-may-care conduct. It dramatises middle-class Victorian hypocrisy while arguing that one does well to keep a nice balance between honesty and concealment.

Lady Windermere, suspecting her husband to have an affair with the experienced Mrs Erlynne, decides to leave him for the debonair Lord Darlington. In circumstances highly compromising for both, Mrs Erlynne sacrifices her reputation for Lady Windermere - an act of maternal love, for it turns out that she is Lady Windermere's mother and has been blackmailing Windermere to keep quiet about it. Lady Windermere remains innocent of the truth and her mother marries to live abroad.

Biografía del autor

p Novelista, poeta y dramaturgo, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) nació en Dublín y se formó en el ambiente universitario británico. Viajó mucho y se instaló en París, donde conoció a autores como Zola, Gide o Mallarmé. Fue un hombre excéntrico que se vio sometido a juicio, encarcelado y condenado a trabajos forzados por su homosexualidad. El decadentismo y el esteticismo, pero también su peripecia vital influyeron fuertemente en su creación literaria. i El fantasma de Canterville /i (1888), i La importancia de llamarse Ernesto /i (1895), i De Profundis /i (1905) y, cómo no, i El retrato de Dorian Gray /i (1890), fueron sus mejores obras.<br>