... Printed in full are also some letters previously available only as extracts. The most significant and amusing may be Wilde's original scenario for The Importance of Being Earnest, sent, when desperate for cash, to actor-manager George Alexander. Almost everything in it but the governess, Miss Prism, and the rivalry between estranged brothers, fails to survive in the play as performed. Wilde's wit, charm and genius for paradox often surface, but the letters of his postprison years, from 1897 to 1900, expose a pathetic and paranoid derelict unwilling or unable to control his bent for self-destruction. The correspondence, including letters to Wilde from his adoring, then estranged, wife and several literary colleagues, compels in the way one is drawn to the sinking of the Titanic or the crash of the Hindenburg. ...