Short Stories
Before Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote comic stories for London magazines. Four were collected in 1891 as Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories. The Portrait of Mr. W. H., a story built around a theory about Shakespeare's sonnets, first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1889.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
A palm reader tells a young aristocrat that he is destined to commit a murder, so he decides to get it over with before his wedding. A comic crime story.
The Canterville Ghost
An American family buys an English country house with a resident ghost, and refuses to be frightened by him. The ghost takes it very badly.
The Model Millionaire
A charming young man with no money gives a sovereign to a ragged beggar posing for a painter, and the beggar turns out to be something else entirely.
The Sphinx Without a Secret
A man falls for a mysterious woman who keeps secret appointments, and discovers the one thing he never suspected about her mystery.
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
Three men become obsessed with a theory about the young actor to whom Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets, and the theory costs one of them his life. Part story, part literary criticism.