Lady Windermere's Fan

Lady Windermere has a happy marriage-or she believes she does, until one of London society's gossips, the Duchess of Berwick, arrives with her daughter to voice her suspicions about an affair Lord Windermere appears to be having. And the duchess's testimony is not the only evidence either. Lord Windermere's private bank book shows that he has been giving large-and frequent-sums of money to a "Mrs. Erlynne," and he even admits to seeing much of the woman. To add insult to injury, Lord Windermere insists that Mrs. Erlynne be invited to the ball being held for Lady Windermere's birthday.
Employing the witty dialogue, social satire, and outrageous paradox for which he is still remembered today, Oscar Wilde's classic play shines a light on the destructiveness of gossip and superficial judgment. Lady Windermere's Fan examines the ambiguous sexual morality and gender politics at the heart of the British ruling class, while simultaneously challenging our perceptions of what constitutes a "good woman."

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 - 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.