In the summer of 1893 in an English village called Goring-On-Thames, thirty-nine-year-old Oscar Wilde began work on his third comedic play An Ideal Husband. Wilde had already enjoyed commercial success with his two previous comedies of manners, A Woman of No Importance and Lady Windermere's Fan, but was hoping his new work would truly cement his fame. Wilde was at this stage a noted and fashionable figure on the London social scene. A keen follower of the philosophy of aestheticism, Wilde delighted in art for beauty's sake alone. Though famed for his witty insights into Victorian society Oscar Wilde was, in fact, Irish born and raised. It was perhaps this sense of 'otherness' that...
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