Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O' Flahertie Wills Wilde. October 16 1854 - November 30 1900. Irish writer, dandy and among his contemporaries a controversial advocate for the aestheticist movement.

Early Life

Wilde was born the second son of an Irish protestant family. His father was the famous eye surgeon Sir William Wilde (knighted in 1864), while his mother Jane Francisca Elgee was a poet under the well-known pen name "Speranza" (the Italian word for "hope"). Under this name, she wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders and supported the Irish Home Rule movement. Oscar Wilde began his academic career at Trinity College in Dublin and went to Magdalen College in Oxford in 1874. In 1878, Wilde won the Newdigate Prize with his poem "Ravenna". While at Oxford, he became deeply fascinated by the lectures and theories of Walter Pater and John Ruskin, who supported "art for art’s sake". This aestheticist movement left its impression on British literature and decorative arts and it also turned the artist and his lifestyle into a piece of art himself.

Success

In 1881 he published his Poems and in 1882, Wilde went on a lecturing tour to the United States of America and Canada, which he intrigues by his flamboyant style and his witticisms. He also writes plays such as Vera or the Duchess of Padua. In 1884, he marries Constance Lloyd with whom he got two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. The following years witness works like The Happy Prince or the Canterville Ghost, but it is only in 1890 that Wilde publishes his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray in Lippincott’s magazine. Due to criticism and alleged immorality regarding this work, Wilde included a defensive preface to the book. He also wrote theoretical texts such as The Critic as Artist to promote his aestheticist views. Wilde became famous for his comedies, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). His non-comical play Salome (1893) could not be premiered in England (due to censorship laws which forbade the appearance of Biblical characters on stage), and was first staged in French in 1895.

Downfall

However, it was Wilde’s homosexual relationship with his younger friend and lover Lord Alfred Douglas, called "Bosie", that led to a quarrel with his father, the Marquess of Queensberry and ultimately his social downfall. In 1895 Queensberry had accused Wilde to be a "somdomite" [sic]. Wilde sued. Queensberry's defence could put serious doubts on Wilde's morals. This, in turn, brought the prosecution on the plan. After two trials, Wilde was convicted of having committed "acts of gross indecency" and sentenced to two years imprisonment and hard labour (which he mostly spent at Reading Gaol). In 1897, Wilde was released, but broken. He went to Europe and ultimately spent his last years in France, where he died of cerebral meningitis in a hotel in Paris. Supposedly, his famous last words were "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go" (no reliable source to be found, but: nicely invented).

Selected Works

• Poems (1881)
• The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888)
• Intentions (1891)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
• Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
• A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• An Ideal Husband (1895)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
• Salomé (1896)
• De Profundis (1905)

References

• http://www.litencyc.com/
• http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page
• Wilde, Oscar. Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Intro. By Merlin Holland. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.