Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" tells the story of a young man, Dorian Gray, whose wish for eternal youth leads to a hedonistic life filled with moral degradation. Influenced by Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian eventually murders his friend Basil Hallward, whose portrait reflects the corruption of Dorian's soul, while Dorian remains outwardly beautiful. Ultimately, the novel explores themes of beauty, morality, and the consequences of living a life without accountability.

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Lady Windermere, convinced her husband Arthur is infatuated with the disreputable Mrs Erlynne, is driven to the brink of leaving him and momentarily accepts Lord Darlington’s love.
Mrs Erlynne secretly averts a public scandal—destroying Margaret’s letter and taking the blame—then demands the affair be kept secret.
The play ends with the Windermeres reconciled, Mrs Erlynne withdrawing (soon to marry Lord Augustus), and Wilde exposing society’s hypocrisy, reputation and sacrifice.

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Five moral fairy tales by Oscar Wilde that expose selfishness, hypocrisy and the cost of compassion.
Summaries: the Happy Prince gives his riches via a swallow’s sacrifice; the Nightingale dies to make a red rose for an ungrateful student; the Selfish Giant is redeemed by kindness; the Devoted Friend satirizes exploitative friendship; the Remarkable Rocket ridicules vanity.

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Two bachelors, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, maintain invented aliases (Ernest and Bunbury) to escape duties, initiating reciprocal deceptions.
Their false identities produce romantic confusions with Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew and provoke Lady Bracknell’s scrutiny of social origins.
A recovered handbag reveals Jack’s true parentage and name (Ernest), permitting the marriages and delivering Wilde’s satirical indictment of Victorian seriousness and pretension.

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American diplomat Hiram B. Otis buys the ancient Canterville Chase and—by applying Yankee practicality and his family's mischievousness—turns the feared ancestral ghost into the butt of comic humiliations. In the end the gentle, compassionate Virginia befriends and redeems the lonely spectre, whose death brings peace and the bequeathed jewels to her, and she later marries the Duke of Cheshire.

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On a moonlit palace terrace the prophet Jokanaan denounces the incestuous court of Herod and Herodias; Princess Salomé becomes obsessed, Narraboth summons Jokanaan and then kills himself when the prophet rejects her. After Salomé’s sensuous "dance of the seven veils" for Herod, she obtains his oath and demands Jokanaan’s head on a silver charger, kisses the severed head, and is immediately executed by the enraged Tetrarch.