In Pen, Pencil and Poison, Wilde invents a fictional artist called Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, who is not only a talented artist but also a poisoner whose crimes are too numerous to record. But the two qualities in Wainewright are not compatible. Wilde put the two seemingly contradictory qualities upon one person. Through this arrangement, Wilde highlights his consistent artistic view: No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Oscar Wilde is the most active advocator and also the earnest practitioner of aestheticism.

The protagonist, Wainewright is from Dublin, graduates from Oxford and start to dedicate himself to the cause of art at the age of 25. He is once the object people pursue and admire because of his artistic endowment. But he turns out to be a habitual poisoner, either to obtain property or in retaliation. At last his criminal is disclosed. From this essay, we can see that Oscar Wilde is the most active advocator and also the earnest practitioner of aestheticism.

Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854—30 November 1900) was an Irish writer，poet and essayist. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death. As a playwright he was on a par with Bernard Shaw. He is a particularly enthusiastic advocate of aesthetic art movement. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays.

"In short, there is material aplenty here for the average reader and considerable matter for the specialist."