Between March 1885 and May 1890 Oscar Wilde wrote more than seventy unsigned book reviews for W. T. Stead's Pall Mall Gazette, between November 1887 and June 1889 he was editor of The Woman's World, and throughout the late 1880s he contributed a number of pieces, some signed, some not, to other newspapers and journals.

It may seem surprising that one of the world's great literary stylists should have produced so much anonymous material. Today we would probably assume that anything written by Wilde would be instantly recognisable, but in the 1880s, when he was making his living as a professional journalist, one among many, not only was anonymity the general rule, the famous style had yet to become a badge of personality. That everyone now knows, or thinks they know, what constitutes the 'Wildean' is partly the result of more than a century's familiarity with his writings and with countless imitators. Once a style can be recognised it can also be copied.

There are signs nevertheless that Wilde saw anonymous journalism as a way of mapping out his personal literary territory, even if the hidden pattern can sometimes look like a maze. He certainly did not confine himself to a limited number of favourite topics. Indeed, it was one of the requirements of the kind of reviewer that Wilde aspired to become that he or she should be able to write on a wide range of subjects. From romantic novels to cookbooks, from every kind of translation to musicology: Wilde took pride in attempting the unlikely. His intellectual curiosity was more wide-ranging than has sometimes been assumed.