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Oscar Wilde
1854 - 1900
The British author Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
(1854-1900) was part of the "art for art's sake" movement in
English literature at the end of the 19th century. He is best
known for his brilliant, witty comedies.
Oscar
Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born October 16, 1854 in
Dublin, Ireland. Both of his parents were writers, and from an
early age, Wilde was exposed to brilliant literary thinkers.
Wilde's mother composed revolutionary Irish poetry and published
under the name Speranza. Wilde's father, Sir William Wilde,
published more than a dozen books on archaeology and Irish
folklore, in addition to his career as an eminent ear and eye
surgeon.
Wilde showed literary promise as a child. As a result, he was
enrolled at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen at the age of
10. He then received scholarships to Trinity College
(1871-1874), where he won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek; and
Magdalen College, Oxford (1974-1878), where he was awarded the
Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna.
While attending Oxford, Wilde was deeply influenced by the
aesthetic writings of John Ruskin and Walter Pater, which
stressed the importance of art in life. As an aesthete, Wilde
decorated his rooms at Oxford with objets d'art, such as china
and peacock feathers. In addition, he wore long hair, a velvet
jacket, and knee breeches. Wilde became well-known in social
circles because of his wit and flair. He was satirized in
Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience (1881) and the
periodical Punch.
Wilde published his first book entitled Poems in 1881. The next
year, he embarked on a successful lecture tour in the United
States. While in the United States, Wilde saw the first play he
had written, Vera, or the Nihilists (1882), performed in New
York City. Wilde returned to Great Britain in 1883 and settled
in London. In 1884, he married a wealthy Irish woman named
Constance Lloyd. They had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, after
which Wilde devoted all of his time to writing.
For two years, Wilde edited Woman's World and worked as a
reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette. In addition, he published a
book of fairy tales entitled The Happy Prince and Other Tales
(1888). Wilde's most successful and prolific period began in the
1890s. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published
in 1891. Some considered the book immoral, but others called it
brilliant. In 1892, Wilde published two additional books of
fairy tales entitled Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other
Stories and A House of Pomegranates.
During the 1890s, Wilde also became known as one of London's
most prominent playwrights for his society comedies. His first
success was Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), followed by A Woman of
No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895). and The
Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Another play, Salom̀ (1893)
was banned in London but later translated and produced in Paris.
In 1895, at the height of his career, Wilde was accused by the
Marquess of Queensberry of being a sodomite based on his
relationship with the Marquess' son Lord Alfred Douglas. In
turn, Wilde sued Queensberry for libel. Wilde lost his suit and
was prosecuted by the government for indecent acts. He was found
guilty and sentenced to two years at hard labor. During his
incarceration, Wilde wrote an extensive letter to Douglas, which
was later edited and published as De Profundis (1905). He also
based The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) on his experience in
prison.
Wilde was released from prison in May, 1897. He was bankrupt,
with few future prospects. He moved to Paris but was unable to
revive his literary career. Wilde died suddenly on November 30,
1900 of an acute brain inflammation. A complete edition of his
literary works and critical writings were published in 1908.
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The British author Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
(1854-1900) was part of the "art for art's sake" movement in
English literature at the end of the 19th century. He is best
known for his brilliant, witty comedies.
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on Oct. 16, 1854. His
father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon; his mother,
Jane Francisca Elgee Wilde, wrote popular poetry and prose under
the pseudonym Speranza. For three years Wilde was educated in
the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he began to
attract public attention through the eccentricity of his writing
and his style of life.
At the age of 23 Wilde entered Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1878
he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna." He
attracted a group of followers, and they initiated a personal
cult, self-consciously effete and artificial. "The first duty in
life," Wilde wrote in Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of
the Young (1894), "is to be as artificial as possible." After
leaving Oxford he expanded his cult. His iconoclasm contradicted
the Victorian era's easy pieties, but the contradiction was one
of his purposes. Another of his aims was the glorification of
youth.
Wilde published his well-received Poems in 1881. The next six
years were active ones. He spent an entire year lecturing in the
United States and then returned to lecture in England. He
applied unsuccessfully for a position as a school inspector. In
1884 he married, and his wife bore him children in 1885 and in
1886. He began to publish extensively in the following year. His
writing activity became as intense and as erratic as his life
had been for the previous six years. From 1887 to 1889 Wilde
edited the magazine Woman's World. His first popular success as
a prose writer was The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). The
House of Pomegranates (1892) was another collection of his fairy
tales.
Wilde became a practicing homosexual in 1886. He believed that
his subversion of the Victorian moral code was the impulse for
his writing. He considered himself a criminal who challenged
society by creating scandal. Before his conviction for
homosexuality in 1895, the scandal was essentially private.
Wilde believed in the criminal mentality. "Lord Arthur Savile's
Crime," from Lord Arthur Savile'sCrime and Other Stories (1891),
treated murder and its successful concealment comically. The
original version of The Picture of Dorian Gray in Lippincott's
Magazine emphasized the murder of the painter Basil Hallward by
Dorlan as the turning point in Dorian's disintegration; the
criminal tendency became the criminal act.
Dorian Gray was published in book form in 1891. The novel
celebrated youth: Dorian, in a gesture typical of Wilde, is
parentless. He does not age, and he is a criminal. Like all of
Wilde's work, the novel was a popular success. His only book of
formal criticism, Intentions (1891), restated many of the
esthetic views that Dorian Gray had emphasized, and it points
toward his later plays and stories. Intentions emphasized the
importance of criticism in an age that Wilde believed was
uncritical. For him, criticism was an independent branch of
literature, and its function was vital.
His Dramas
Between 1892 and 1895 Wilde was an active dramatist, writing
what he identified as "trivial comedies for serious people." His
plays were popular because their dialogue was baffling, clever,
and often epigrammatic, relying on puns and elaborate word games
for its effect. Lady Windermere's Fan was produced in 1892, A
Woman of No Importance in 1893, and An Ideal Husband and The
Importance of Being Earnest in 1895.
On March 2, 1895, Wilde initiated a suit for criminal libel
against the Marquess of Queensberry, who had objected to Wilde's
friendship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. When his suit
failed in April, countercharges followed. After a spectacular
court action, Wilde was convicted of homosexual misconduct and
sentenced to 2 years in prison at hard labour.
Prison transformed Wilde's experience as radically as had his
1886 introduction to homosexuality. In a sense he had prepared
himself for prison and its transformation of his art. De
Profundisis a moving letter to a friend and apologia that Wilde
wrote in prison; it was first published as a whole in 1905. His
theme was that he was not unlike other men and was a scapegoat.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) was written after his release.
In this poem a man has murdered his mistress and is about to be
executed, but Wilde considered him only as criminal as the rest
of humanity. He wrote: "For each man kills the thing he loves,/
Yet each man does not die."
After his release from prison Wilde lived in France. He
attempted to write a play in his pretrial style, but this effort
failed. He died in Paris on Nov. 30, 1900.
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This web page was last updated on:
17 December, 2008
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