Oscar Wilde Biography

Oscar Wilde	Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wilde Born: 1854-10-16 Birthplace: Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland Died: 1900-11-30 Location of Death: Paris, France Cause of Death: Infection Race: White Religion: Roman Catholic Field: Playwright, Novelist, Victim Famous for: The Importance of Being Earnest
Top 500 Influencial People #500 Field: Playwright

Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 - 1900) was an Irish author.

He was born in Dublin, Ireland to Sir William and Lady Jane Wilde. His mother, Jane Francisca Elgee, was well known in Dublin as a writer who wrote under the pen-name of Speranza. Sir William Wilde, his father and Ireland’s leading ear and eye surgeon, wrote books on archaeology and folklore. Wilde’s mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, worked as a translator, writing for the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, under the name "Speranza".

After Portora Royal School (1864-1871) Wilde studied the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, with distinction (from 1871 to 1874) and the Magdalen College in Oxford (1874-1878). While at Magdalen College, Wilde won the Newdigate Prize in 1878 with his poem Ravenna.

While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater who taught about the central importance of art in life. Oscar Wilde soon became an advocate of Aestheticism and supported the movement’s basic principle Art for Art’s Sake (L’art pour l’art). Theophile Gautier's doctrine, new at the time, was brought into prominence by James McNeill Whistler. In 1879 Wilde started to teach Aestethic values in London. Later he lectured in the United States and in Canada where he was torn apart by the critics. At Oxford his behaviour cost him a ducking in the river Cherwell in addition to having his rooms trashed, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, too-too costumes and aestheticism generally became a recognized pose. The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and Aestheticism, and Aestheticism was caricatured in Gilbert and Sullivan's mocking operetta Patience (1881).

The aesthetic movement represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete, Oscar Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Apart from the ridicule he encountered, his affected paradoxes and his witty sayings were quoted on all sides. In 1882 he went on a lecture tour in the United States, afterwards returning to Great Britain where he worked as a reviewer for the Paul Mall Gazette in the years 1887-1889.

Afterwards he became the editor of Woman’s World. During this time he published his most famous Fairy Tale The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Three years later his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was published. Critics often claimed that there existed parallels between Wilde’s and the protagonist’s life.

In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and he fathered 2 sons Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). He had already published in 1881 a selection of his poems, which, however, only attracted admiration in a limited circle. In 1888 appeared The Happy Prince and Other Tales, illustrated by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood. This volume of fairy tales was followed up later by a second collection, The House of Pomegranates (1892), acknowledged by the author to be "intended neither for the British child nor the British public." In much of his writings, and in his general attitude, there was to most people of his day an undertone of rather nasty suggestion which created prejudice against him, and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) impressed them more for its suggestiveness than for any supposed literary brilliance. Wilde contributed some feature articles to the art reviews, and in 1891 re-published three of them as a book called Intentions.

Wilde’s favourite genres were the society comedy and the play. From 1892 on, almost every year a new work of Oscar Wilde was published. His first real success with the larger public was as a dramatist with Lady Windermere's Fan at the St James's Theatre in 1892, followed by A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), which became Wilde’s masterpiece in which he satirized the upper-class. The dramatic and literary ability shown in these plays, all of which were published later in book form, was as undisputed as their action and ideas were characteristically paradoxical. In 1893 the publisher refused to allow Wilde's Salome to be produced, but it was produced in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt in 1894.

In 1891 Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the eighth Marquess of Queensbury. Even though he was fond of Douglas and vice versa, Wilde was married to Constance Lloyd. Douglas' father was livid over his son’s relationship and wanted to bring Wilde down. He accused him of being a sodomite. As a result, Wilde took legal action and sued the Marquess of Queensbury for libel. But the court decided in favour of the marquess. Oscar Wilde was arrested and jailed. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 30,000 word letter to Douglas, which was published after his death with the title De Profundis.

After being released on May 18th 1897, Oscar Wilde left the country and travelled around Europe for the last three years of his life. In 1900, at the age of 46, Oscar Wilde died of cerebral meningitis in Paris. Shortly before his death he converted to the Roman Catholic Church, which he had long admired.