A Poet Can Survive Everything but a Misprint

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books

''All art,'' Oscar Wilde once announced, ''is quite useless.'' Selected here are some of his finest prose works on the subject of art – useless, illuminating, artificial, uplifting, radical, gorgeous, boring, sublime – and his most brilliant aphorisms on the creative life. Whether lamenting the crass urge to hold art to realist or natural standards or arguing against morality as a guiding principle, Wilde defends the artist while delighting the audience.