Famed as a wit and bon viveur, Oscar Wilde lived up to his reputation. This selection of plays, poems and prose writings, introduced by Terry Eagleton, includes The Importance of Being Earnest , Lady Windermere’s Fan , The Picture of Dorian Gray , The Critic as an Artist , Apologia , The Soul of a Man Under Socialism , Letter to Robert Ross , Requiescat and The Ballad of Reading Goal . Terry Eagleton is the author of Criticism and Ideology , Marxism and Literary Criticsm and Literary Theory: An Introduction .