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Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon; his mother wrote popular poetry and other work under the pseudonym Speranza . Oscar enjoyed a cultured and privileged childhood. .
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Oscar FingallO'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon; his mother wrote popular poetry and other work under the pseudonym Speranza. Oscar enjoyed a cultured and privileged childhood.
After attending Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ireland, Wilde moved on to study the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874. There, he began attracting public attention through the uniqueness of his writing and his lifestyle. Before leaving Trinity College, Wilde was awarded many honors, including a Gold Medal for Greek
At 23, Wilde entered Magdalen College, Oxford, England. In 1878 he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna." He attracted a group of followers whose members were purposefully unproductive 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.” His iconoclasm clashed with Victorian traditions, but this contradiction was one that he aimed for. Another of his aims was the glorification of youth.
He spent the year 1882, at age 28, lecturing in the United States.
In 1884, at age 30, he married Constance Lloyd, who bore him two sons: Vyvyan in 1885, and Cyril in 1886.
In 1886, at age 32, Wilde became a practicing homosexual after being introduced to the practice by his friend, Robbie Ross. Although his affairs were kept private at first, he attacked the Victorian moral code in his writing, and behaved in public as a dandy and an aesthete. From 1887 to 1889, he edited the magazine Woman's World.
The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in book form in 1891. The novel was a celebration of youth, and it was a great success. Dorian, in a gesture typical of Wilde, is parentless. He does not age, and he is a criminal. His only book of formal criticism, Intentions (1891), restated many of the 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 important. In 1891, after the publication of Dorian Gray, Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, and the men became lovers. Wilde was 37, and Douglas was 21.
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 clever, short and witty, relying on puns and elaborate word games for their 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. Around this time, he began going out in public with Lord Alfred Douglas, causing a major scandal.
On March 2, 1895, Wilde initiated a suit for criminal libel (a statement that damages someone's reputation) 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 two years in prison at hard labor.
Prison transformed Wilde, and destroyed him completely. He was abandoned by most of his closest friends, and his home and possessions were sold. There was a widespread clampdown on homosexuality. While in prison, Wilde wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol(1898), a poem based on a man who murdered his mistress and was executed. 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 Wilde was released from prison he lived in France under the name Sebastian Melmoth. He got back together with Alfred Douglas, but the relationship did not last. His wife had died and he lived his last two years in poverty, as an alcoholic. He suffered from an ear injury he’d sustained in prison, which eventually became infected and spread to his brain. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900, age 46, in the presence of his only remaining friend, Robbie Ross.
In 1905, De Profundiswas published, a moving letter to Douglas that Wilde wrote in prison. It serves as a formal defense of Wilde’s “crime.” He argues that he was being used as a cultural scapegoat.
