The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London on 14 February 1895 and was Oscar Wilde’s last play. Two young gentlemen lead double lives: in town, Jack Worthing calls himself Ernest; in the country, Algernon Moncrieff invents an invalid friend, Bunbury, whenever duty threatens pleasure. When both fall in love with young ladies determined to marry only a man called Ernest, the lies collide under the formidable eye of Lady Bracknell, until a hand-bag left at Victoria Station resolves everything.

This English edition presents the three-act play with 52 footnotes on the society, places, politics and allusions of Victorian London, an editor’s introduction, the cast of the first performance, Wilde’s original dedication to Robert Ross, a chronology and a note on the text, compared with the first edition of 1899.