Kerry Powell examines Wilde's plays in relation to popular theatre of the 1890s, both in England and on the Continent.

1. Rewriting the past; 2. Lady Windermere's Fan and the unmotherly mother; 3. Salomé, the censor, and the divine Sarah; 4. Unimportant women and men with a past; 5. Wilde and Ibsen; 6. An Ideal Husband: resisting the feminist police; 7. The importance of being at Terry's; 8. Algernon's other brothers; Epilogue; Appendix: Dramatists of the 1890s; Notes; Bibliography; Index.