The Importance of Being Earnest

Varied Types by G. K. Chesterton.Another delightful and sharply pointed excursion into the topics of the day, and of our day as well, with Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Here he uses his wit and mastery of paradox to bring into focus a number of historical persons who in many ways typify the people who presently shape our world and who in their own right have already shaped Western civilization. These reprinted magazine articles are filled with his good-natured wit and devastating ability to use reductio ad absurdum to destroy the popular myths that drive our society at full-speed into, and expose the utter nonsense that underlies, secular humanism. You will come away with yet another new collection of wonderful quotes.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

World I Live In by Helen Keller.The World I Live In by Helen Keller is a collection of essays that poignantly tells of her impressions of the world, through her sense of touch, smell, her imagination and dreams. My hand is to me what your hearing and sight together are to you. In large measure we travel the same highways, read the same books, speak the same language, yet our experiences are different. All my comings and goings turn on the hand as on a pivot. It is the hand that binds me to the world of men and women. The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter. With the dropping of a little word from another's hand into mine, a slight flutter of the fingers, began the intelligence, the joy, the fullness of my life.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Pagan Papers by Kenneth Grahame.We join our thoughtful author on a dreamy stroll at dusk through the English countryside, and listen to his nonchalant, slightly scattered musings on the human condition...everything from loafing about and old book collecting, to heavier topics like what is more valuable: memory or forgetfulness and can we connect back to nature, or is it too late to do so. All these ponderings, and more, are explored within. Published in 1898, this collection of essays is Kenneth Grahame's first complied work. His wry and witty humor, which later would be celebrated in his famous novel, The Wind in the Willows, shines through here.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Letters of Oscar Wilde, Volume 3 (1895-1897) by Oscar Wilde.This third collection of the correspondence of Oscar Wilde includes the letters Wilde wrote from prison. It begins with notes of thanks to the friends who stood by him after his arrest, and ends with discussions of his plans for after his release. De Profundis, the long letter Wilde wrote to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, is represented by the expurgated 1913 edition as well as suppressed portions that were later published elsewhere. For a complete collection of Wilde's letters, please see "The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde," (2000) edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Poems of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde.Complied by Thomas B. Mosher and released in 1906, this collection contains nearly every poem published by Oscar Wilde during his lifetime. From his Oxford undergrad days, through his rise to fame and scandal, all the way to his death, we witness an iconic author's evolution. This work is derived from Wilde's first published piece, the 1878 Newdigate Prize-winning Ravenna, his 1881 poetry collection, and verses found in literary magazines and other publications.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Happy Prince and Other Tales (version 2) by Oscar Wilde.The Happy Prince and Other Tales (also sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Stories) is an 1888 collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde. It is most famous for The Happy Prince, the short tale of a metal statue who befriends a migratory bird. Together, they bring happiness to others, in life as well as in death. The stories convey an appreciation for the exotic, the sensual and for masculine beauty.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde.“(T)he past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.” Published originally as “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” this is not so much a work of sober political analysis; rather it can be summed up as a rhapsodic manifesto on behalf of the Individual. Socialism having deployed technology to liberate the whole of humanity from soul-destroying labour, the State obligingly withers away to allow the free development of a joyful, anarchic hedonism... “Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Canterville Ghost (version 2) by Oscar Wilde.A modern American family move into a traditionally drafty and very haunted English mansion. So far so good but anyone knowing Wilde can expect twists and turns to make it interesting. In this cast the crusty old ghost has a tough time convincing the family he exists and then in frightening them. This is extremely frustrating of course to him and as the protagonist of the story, takes matters (and non-matters) into his hands to deal with the upstart and irreverent new tenants.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Portrait of Mr. W. H. by Oscar Wilde.Wilde's short story about an attempt to uncover the identity of Mr. W. H., the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889. He intended to publish an expanded version of the story as a separate book, a plan that was not realized until after his death. This audiobook is based on the expanded version.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde.A Woman of No Importance is a play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. The play premièred on 19 April 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. It is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of dark comedy. It looks in particular at English upper class society and has been reproduced on stages in Europe and North America since his death in 1900.Featured on The Importance of Being Earnest.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.