"Backgrounds" includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Karl Beckson, Sharon Marcus, and Michael Patrick Gillespie. "Early Reviews and Reactions" collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, including George Bernard Shaw's famous dissenting review and other commentary by H. G. Wells, Hamilton Fyfe, and William Archer.

"Essays in Criticism" includes seven diverse assessments-six of them new to the Second Edition-of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Burkhard Niederhoff, Christopher S. Nassaar, Clifton Snider, Brigitte Bastiat, Eibhear Walshe, and Maneck H. Daruwala.

A chronology and selected bibliography are also included.