The three plays in this volume, written between 1882 and 1886, are all concerned with the problem of truth-telling, and with the individual bent on proclaiming truths, however unpalatable, to society — as Ibsen himself had done, with disillusioning results, in his earlier play Ghosts.

          Of the three, The Wild Duck is perhap’s Ibsen’s masterpiece — though that claim has also been made for the skillfully constructed Rosmerholm. And with An Enemy of the People, as J. W. McFarlane, Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia, observes in his introduction, these plays mark a significant shift in the playwright’s whole scheme of values.

          The texts of the three plays, which Professor McFarlane has "translated in a manner at once sober and supple", are taken, with his illuminating introduction and a select bibliography, from Volume VI (1960) of his edition of The Oxford Ibsen.