Lady Windermere’s Fan

Convinced that her husband is paying court to the notorious Mrs Erlynne, Lady Windermere resolves to leave him and accept another man’s love. What she does not know is the true bond between her and the woman she despises, a secret that will be tested over a single dangerous night. First staged in 1892, this was the comedy that made Oscar Wilde a force in the London theatre. Its plot of a good woman and a supposedly bad one lets Wilde question who really deserves respectability, and the play sparkles with epigrams that audiences still quote. Behind the drawing-room laughter sits a genuinely moving story about a mother’s silence. Read it free in PDF and EPUB.