The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde's only novel: a beautiful young man stays unchanged while his hidden portrait records age, cruelty, and guilt.
Read our take
Intentions
by Oscar Wilde
Four essays and dialogues in which Oscar Wilde argues that criticism is creative, art need not copy life, and a work should not be reduced to a moral lesson.
- 1891
- Atmospheric
- lyrical
- funny
- voice-driven
About Oscar Wilde
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeIntentions collects 'The Decay of Lying,' 'Pen, Pencil and Poison,' 'The Critic as Artist,' and 'The Truth of Masks.' Wilde often places the argument in witty dialogue, allowing one speaker to provoke and another to object. The book explains the ideas about art and interpretation that his fiction and plays would put into practice through the 1890s. It is the theoretical basis for almost everything Wilde would write next — The Picture of Dorian Gray (already published serially in 1890), the four society comedies, and the prose experiments of Salome and The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
The story, in more detail
Wilde had published the four essays separately in Nineteenth Century and The Fortnightly Review between 1889 and 1890. The 1891 collection revised them substantially: 'The Decay of Lying' and 'The Critic as Artist' were expanded, and Wilde added the two lectures 'Pen, Pencil and Poison' and 'The Truth of Masks' to make a full-length book. The 1891 title Intentions replaced the working title The Rise of Historical Criticism that Wilde had considered.
The collection is not a simple statement of rules. Wilde gives extreme positions to invented speakers, uses paradox to expose ordinary assumptions, and makes criticism itself part of the performance. 'The Decay of Lying' is a dialogue between Cyril and Vivian; 'The Critic as Artist' is a dialogue between Gilbert and Ernest. The dialogue form matters — Wilde is not simply asserting the positions his speakers take.
The central questions are practical: Does art imitate life, or teach people what to notice? Is criticism secondary to creation, or another creative act? Does historical accuracy help a play, or can it prevent theatrical truth? Wilde's answers — art creates the terms through which life becomes visible; criticism is a creative activity that produces new works; historical costume is dead unless the actor and audience make it live — became the working aesthetics of European literary modernism.
The argument
'The Decay of Lying' (dialogue) attacks the demand that art copy ordinary reality. Vivian argues that nature imitates art rather than the other way around — that fog in London became visible to Londoners only after Whistler had painted it. The essay's most quoted line: 'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.'
'The Critic as Artist' (dialogue) presents interpretation as creative work in its own right. Gilbert argues that criticism at its highest is a form of autobiography and that the true critic makes new works out of the works they discuss.
'Pen, Pencil and Poison' is a study of the writer, painter, and convicted murderer Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794–1847), whose Newgate Calendar entry Wilde treats as a case study in the modern relationship between art and moral judgement. 'The Truth of Masks' considers costume, historical accuracy, and theatrical truth in Shakespearean performance — the essay Wilde regarded as the weakest of the four and later half-repudiated.
Themes and analysis
Art and the open window
The opening disagreement begins with a practical invitation to leave the library. Cyril praises the landscape through a comparison with fruit; Vivian answers by judging nature as though it were an unfinished artwork. Both make seeing inseparable from description, even while disputing what deserves admiration. The comfortable room is therefore part of the argument, not neutral scenery. Cyril's interruption also exposes Vivian's inconsistency about thinking and writing, keeping the pronouncements attached to a speaker whose performance can be challenged.
Costume becomes theatre
In The Truth of Masks, costume does more than identify a period: it changes what actors can do and what spectators can understand without explanation. Wilde's attention moves from individual garments to their relation with gesture, scenery and the stage's entire color scheme. Historical knowledge becomes useful through artistic arrangement, not through displaying research for its own sake. The closing refusal to endorse every preceding claim complicates the essay's authority: its persuasive voice presents a standpoint rather than a final rule.
Quotes from Intentions
Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it.
Why we recommend it
Why it matters
It gives readers the clearest route into Wilde's aesthetics without turning his epigrams into isolated quotations.
Where it fits
Read it after Dorian Gray, when its claims about art and morality have a difficult example beside them.
What lingers
The four essays it collects — 'The Decay of Lying,' 'Pen, Pencil and Poison,' 'The Critic as Artist,' and 'The Truth of Masks' — are the theoretical basis for almost everything Wilde would go on to write in fiction and drama.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Cyril and Vivian ('The Decay of Lying')
The two speakers in Wilde's opening dialogue — set in the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire. Cyril is the interlocutor who defends realism and nature; Vivian is Wilde's mouthpiece for the extreme position that life imitates art. Cyril and Vivian were also the names of Wilde's two young sons (born 1885 and 1886), a private tribute inside the book.
Gilbert and Ernest ('The Critic as Artist')
The two speakers in the second and longest dialogue. Gilbert is the aesthetic critic making Wilde's case; Ernest is the sceptical listener whose objections Wilde uses to build the argument. The essay was published in two parts (Nineteenth Century, July and September 1890) and heavily revised for Intentions.
Also in the book
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
The English painter, essayist, art critic, and convicted forger and poisoner (1794–1847), the subject of 'Pen, Pencil and Poison.' Wainewright poisoned at least three people — his uncle George Griffiths, his mother-in-law Mrs Abercromby, and his sister-in-law Helen Abercromby — for life insurance payouts. He was transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1837 and died there. Wilde read his case as an early instance of the modern separation between the aesthetic and the moral.
Bring it to book club
- 'The Decay of Lying' claims that life imitates art. Where does the claim work best as a description of your own experience of art, and where does it feel like performance rather than argument?
- 'The Critic as Artist' proposes that criticism is a creative activity. Compare Wilde's position with a critic you admire — is what they do the imaginative work Wilde is describing?
- 'Pen, Pencil and Poison' asks whether Wainewright's crimes should affect a reader's judgement of his art. Read Wilde's essay four years before the 1895 trials and afterwards — does knowing what happened to Wilde change the reading?
- Wilde later half-repudiated 'The Truth of Masks.' Read the essay knowing that — does the essay's argument hold in spite of Wilde's later distance from it?
Timeline
January 1889
'The Decay of Lying' appears in Nineteenth Century.
1889
'Pen, Pencil and Poison' appears in The Fortnightly Review.
May 1889
'The Truth of Masks' appears in Nineteenth Century.
July + September 1890
'The Critic as Artist' runs in Nineteenth Century as a two-part dialogue.
May 1891
James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Company publish Intentions in London; Dodd, Mead publish the New York edition. Wilde has substantially revised all four essays for the collection.
1892–1895
The four society comedies Wilde would write during the next four years (Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest) put Intentions's argument into practice.
1895
The trial and imprisonment of Wilde end the aesthetic public argument the book had opened.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Company
- 1891
Reader reviews
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Read our takeIntentions: frequently asked questions
What is Intentions by Oscar Wilde about?
Intentions is a collection of four essays and dialogues about aesthetics, criticism, and morality — 'The Decay of Lying,' 'Pen, Pencil and Poison,' 'The Critic as Artist,' and 'The Truth of Masks.' Wilde uses paradox and dialogue to argue that art creates the terms through which life becomes visible, that criticism at its highest is itself creative work, and that a work of art should not be reduced to a moral lesson.
When was Intentions published?
The London edition appeared from James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Company in May 1891, with a New York edition from Dodd, Mead the same month. Wilde had published the four essays separately in Nineteenth Century and The Fortnightly Review between January 1889 and September 1890, and revised them substantially — especially 'The Critic as Artist' — for the book.
What is the main argument of 'The Decay of Lying'?
That art does not imitate life; life imitates art. Vivian argues that nature and history become visible to human observers only after artists have taught them what to see. The essay's most quoted line — 'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life' — was Wilde's deliberate reversal of the ancient defence of imitation as the ground of aesthetic truth.
What is 'The Critic as Artist' about?
The essay defends criticism as a form of creative activity in its own right. Gilbert argues that a critic at his highest makes new works out of the works he discusses, that criticism is a form of autobiography, and that the merely accurate transcription of a work's content is the least interesting critical mode. Wilde put the argument in dialogue so Gilbert's extreme positions could be tested against Ernest's scepticism.
Why did Wilde write about Thomas Wainewright?
Wilde read Wainewright's case as an early modern instance of the separation between aesthetic judgement and moral judgement. Wainewright was a serious painter and essayist who was also a forger and poisoner. Wilde used the case to test whether the two spheres could be separated — a question that would return in the courtroom drama of Wilde's own life four years after the book's publication.
How does Intentions relate to The Picture of Dorian Gray?
The Picture of Dorian Gray was published serially in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in June 1890 and as a book in April 1891, one month before Intentions. Wilde revised both texts in the same period. Intentions gives the theoretical position that the novel had already staged: that a work of art should not be reduced to a moral, that the moral of a work of art is contained in the fact that it is a work of art, and that the artist is not answerable to the ordinary judgement passed on the artist's characters.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Intentions, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Intentions
NovelOscar Wilde, 1891Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Intentions (1913 text)
WebsiteProject GutenbergUsed forThe opening dialogue and selected costume passages, including the conclusion; no full-volume or magazine collation.
3Works catalogued under Oscar Wilde
ArchiveBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forUsed to place Intentions within Oscar Wilde's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
4Oscar Wilde
WebsitePoetry FoundationUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Oscar Wilde's career and the period in which Intentions appeared.
5Wilde, Oscar (1854–1900)
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Oscar Wilde's wider catalogue.
6Making Oscar Wilde
WebsiteFaculty of English, University of OxfordUsed forUsed to verify Oscar Wilde's bibliography and place Intentions within the broader chronology of Oscar Wilde's career.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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