Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900

Epithet: writer of plays

Irish writer, poet, and playwright.

Irish poet, dramatist and novelist.

Henry-D. Davray (b. 1873) was a French translator.

Oscar Wilde was born October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. Throughout his career, he wrote poetry, plays, essays, short stories, and novels, including his most famous work, The Picture of Dorian Gray . Wilde was known for his wit and public speaking, as well as his flamboyant and notorious lifestyle.

Irish author.

Irish author and dramatist.

Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900), the wit and dramatist. For fuller details of his life and achievements see the Dictionary of National Biography.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish author and poet; Ada (Mrs. Ernest) Leverson (1859-1936) was an English novelist.

Wilde was born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde in Dublin, Ireland, Oct. 16, 1854; attended Trinity College and Magdalen College, Oxford; won Newdigate poetry prize for Ravenna, 1878; his Poems (1881) sold widely, and he made a lecture tour of US in 1882; married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and had two sons; published The picture of Dorian Gray (1884); his plays include Lady Windermere's fan (1893), An ideal husband (1895), and The importance of being Earnest (1895); Wilde was accused of homosexual practices with Lord Alfred Douglas, convicted on a morals charge under the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and served two years (1895-97) in Reading Gaol; while imprisoned he wrote De profundis, a letter to Douglas, which was published in 1905; after his release, he wrote The ballad of Reading Gaol (1898); went bankrupt and spent his last years on the European continent; died in Paris, France, in Nov. 30, 1900.

Irish poet, dramatist & novelist.

Oscar Wilde was a British poet, playwright, novelist, and critic.

Oscar Wilde was an Irish author and poet; Ada (Mrs. Ernest) Leverson (1859-1936)was an English novelist.

Noted Irish playwright, poet, and lecturer about aesthetics.

English poet.

English author.

Oscar Wilde was the editor of Woman's world from 1887-1890.

Irish dramatist and poet.

Oscar Wilde, playwright.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, was the second son of Sir William Robert and Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. At the age of ten, Wilde entered the well-known Portora Royal School, where he excelled in Greek studies. His interest in Greek continued at Trinity College, Dublin, where John Mahaffy, an eminent Greek scholar who later took Wilde on a tour of Italy, was his tutor.

Wilde was awarded a scholarship in classics from Magdalene College, Oxford, which he entered in 1874. During his fourth year at Oxford, Wilde won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for imitative poetry with a verse praising Ravenna, a city he had visited with Mahaffy and the burial site of Dante. In addition to his studies, Wilde began to develop his role as poseur and aesthete. Wilde received his BA in 1878 and, after an additional year at Oxford, went to London where he began writing.

In 1880 Wilde published Vera; or, The Nihilists, and in 1881 he was hired by Richard D'Oyly Carte to boost Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera Patience in America by means of a lecture tour. Dressed in black velvet and a full length fur coat, he spoke on the new aestheticism from New York to San Francisco. He met with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, and Jefferson Davies, among others.

After America, Wilde went to Paris where he wrote another play while visiting with Zola, Hugo, Degas, Pissarro, and other literary and artistic figures. In 1883 an American producer agreed to produce Vera in New York. Its abbreviated run left Wilde disappointed and he returned to England and Ireland where he lectured and wrote about his experiences in America. While visiting Dublin, he renewed an acquaintance with Constance Lloyd, and in May of 1884 they were married. They moved to London and Wilde spent the next few years writing reviews and essays and giving lectures. They had two sons, Cyril (b. 1885) and Vyvyan (b. 1886).

Wilde began editing Woman's World magazine in 1887, contributed regularly to Pall Mall Gazette, and worked on a collection of fairy tales, which were published in 1888. His critical essay Intentions and The Portrait of Mr. W. H. appeared in 1889, and the first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. An edited and expanded version of Dorian Gray was published in book form in 1891.

1891 proved an eventful year for Wilde. His second play, The Duchess of Padua, was produced under the title Guido Ferranti . He published a second book of fairy stories, A House of Pomegranates, as well as The Soul of Man under Socialism, and Lord Savile's Crime & Other Stories . Wilde completed another play, Salomé, which the Lord Chamberlain found unsuitable for the English stage. Over the next four years Wilde published Lady Windermere's Fan (1893), A Woman of No Importance (1894), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his most enduring theatrical work, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"), an intimate of Wilde's, accused Wilde of posing as a sodomite. Wilde sued for libel and a trial began in April of 1896. Wilde withdrew from the case and was subsequently arrested on charges of gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. After two trials he was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty of two years at hard labor. He served the bulk of his sentence at Reading Gaol where the warden provided him with paper to write what became De Profundis .

After his release in 1897, Wilde lived in France, Italy, and Switzerland. He renewed his relationship with Bosie; as a result his wife, Constance, who with their children had fled England during his trial, refused to see him. Constance died in 1898. Wilde underwent an operation for an ear infection in October of 1900 from which he never fully recovered. He died in his Paris hotel room on November 30, 1900.

Oscar Wilde embarked on an American tour, in part brokered by Sam Ward. Wilde came to Newport to perform at the Casino Theater and Ward introduced him to his sister Julia Ward Howe. Henry Marion Hall, Howe’s grandson, recalls Wilde’s visit to Howe’s farm in Portsmouth in his memoir Grandmother’s Blue Coach:

"Being a small boy at the time my presence at the tea was not requested, but later I was allowed to accompany the guests down into the vallley. The party included Tom Appleton, the famous Boston wit, Adamowski, leader of the Boston Symphony orchestra, Mrs. Paran Stevens, Lilla Eliott, Grandmother’s nephew F. Marion Crawford, and Oscar Wilde, then at the peak of his popularity. Knowing nothing about a fad then known as 'dress reform' I was bewildered at Wilde’s costume when I walked into the vale beside him. He wore a black velvet jacket, knickerbockers to match, dark silk stockings, and low shoes with glittering buckles. A salmon-colored scarf and slouch hat completed his get-up. It struck me as rather queer, but not half so startling as his hair – long, black, and curling to his shoulders… He held a red rose in one hand and sniffed it as he chatted."

Epithet: author