Oscar Wilde's Profession
Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century

Presents an account of Wilde's writing career, based on publishing contracts and other documentation, as well as evidence of how he composed. This book argues that Wilde was not driven by an oppositional politics, nor was he an aesthetic 'purist'. His writing practices, including his 'plagiarism', reflected the pragmatism of a professional.

At the same time, Oscar Wilde's Profession provides a uniquely detailed account of Wilde's processes of composition, springing from the re-examination of his writing practice currently being undertaken in the Oxford English Texts edition of his complete work: it surveys his writing practices across the whole of the oeuvre, and radically reinterprets the significance of his revision and 'plagiarism'.

Wilde the writer
The journalist
'Of making many books'
The dramatist
The Bodley Head
Post-prison and posthumous works
The writer at work
Appendix: Wilde's books
Select Bibliography
Index