THE FIREWORKS OF OSCAR WILDE, edited...

THE FIREWORKS OF OSCAR WILDE, edited and introduced by Owen Dudley Edwards (Barrie & Jenkins/Trafalgar Square: $17.95). Edwards refers to Wilde’s famed bons mots as fireworks, in an elaborate double reference to the author’s fairy tale, “The Remarkable Rocket,” and the scandal surrounding John Ruskin’s denunciation of James McNeil Whistlers’ painting, “Nocturne in Black and Gold--The Falling Rocket.” This affected terminology quickly cloys, and makes reading the author’s well-researched introduction a wearisome chore. Edwards’ puzzling decision to group the witticisms by the year they were uttered or published may have been intended to suggest the development of Wilde’s style, but the results read like choppy abridgments of his plays and stories. Alvin Redman’s “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde” (Dover), which organizes the brilliant wordplay under subject headings, remains the most useful anthology of Wilde’s unmatched verbal legerdemain.