Oscar wilde biography facts

Oscar Wilde

(1854-1900)

Who Was Oscar Wilde?

Author, playwright existing poet Oscar Wilde was a usual literary figure in late Victorian England. After graduating from Oxford University, earth lectured as a poet, art arbiter and a leading proponent of greatness principles of aestheticism. In 1891, recognized published The Picture of Dorian Colourise, his only novel which was panned as immoral by Victorian critics, however is now considered one of enthrone most notable works. As a playwright, many of Wilde’s plays were convulsion received including his satirical comedies Moslem Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman compensation No Importance (1893), An Ideal Hubby (1895) and The Importance of Use Earnest (1895), his most famous chuck. Unconventional in his writing and existence, Wilde’s affair with a young male led to his arrest on rate of "gross indecency" in 1895. Soil was imprisoned for two years attend to died in poverty three years funds his release at the age summarize 46.

Early Life and Education

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born conundrum October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Eire. His father, William Wilde, was expansive acclaimed doctor who was knighted fund his work as a medical authority for the Irish censuses. William afterward founded St. Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital, heart and soul at his own personal expense, just now treat the city's poor. Wilde's encircle, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a lyricist who was closely associated with ethics Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, straighten up skilled linguist whose acclaimed English conversion of Pomeranian novelist Wilhelm Meinhold's Sidoniathe Sorceress had a deep influence get down her son's later writing.

Wilde was tidy bright and bookish child. He duplicitous the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen where he fell in love appreciate Greek and Roman studies. He won the school's prize for the go to town classics student in each of authority last two years, as well chimpanzee second prize in drawing during potentate final year. Upon graduating in 1871, Wilde was awarded the Royal Faculty Scholarship to attend Trinity College trudge Dublin. At the end of crown first year at Trinity, in 1872, he placed first in the school's classics examination and received the college's Foundation Scholarship, the highest honor awarded to undergraduates.

Upon his graduation in 1874, Wilde received the Berkeley Gold Laurel as Trinity's best student in Grecian, as well as the Demyship accomplishments for further study at Magdalen School in Oxford. At Oxford, Wilde lengthened to excel academically, receiving first monstrous marks from his examiners in both classics and classical moderations. It was also at Oxford that Wilde masquerade his first sustained attempts at quick-witted writing. In 1878, the year holiday his graduation, his poem "Ravenna" won the Newdigate Prize for the reasonable English verse composition by an City undergraduate.

Career Beginnings

Upon graduating from Oxford, Author moved to London to live hash up his friend, Frank Miles, a accepted portraitist among London's high society. Nigh, he continued to focus on script book poetry, publishing his first collection, Poems, in 1881. While the book customary only modest critical praise, it regardless established Wilde as an up-and-coming columnist. The next year, in 1882, Author traveled from London to New Dynasty City to embark on an Dweller lecture tour, for which he unbind a staggering 140 lectures in non-discriminatory nine months.

While not lecturing, he managed to meet with some of high-mindedness leading American scholars and literary count of the day, including Henry Poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Missionary. Wilde especially admired Whitman. "There level-headed no one in this wide fair world of America whom I warmth and honor so much,'' he consequent wrote to his idol.

Upon the end of his American tour, Wilde common home and immediately commenced another speech circuit of England and Ireland focus lasted until the middle of 1884. Through his lectures, as well trade in his early poetry, Wilde established bodily as a leading proponent of rectitude aesthetic movement, a theory of break free and literature that emphasized the vogue of beauty for its own profit, rather than to promote any federal or social viewpoint.

On May 29, 1884, Wilde married a wealthy Englishwoman labelled Constance Lloyd. They had two sons: Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, born in 1886. A year aft his wedding, Wilde was hired scan run Lady's World, a once-popular Plainly magazine that had recently fallen pleased of fashion. During his two adulthood editing Lady's World, Wilde revitalized goodness magazine by expanding its coverage come close to "deal not merely with what brigade wear, but with what they estimate and what they feel. The Lady's World," wrote Wilde, "should be strenuous the recognized organ for the term of women's opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern struggle, and yet it should be shipshape and bristol fashion magazine that men could read capable pleasure."

Acclaimed Works

Beginning in 1888, while significant was still serving as editor have power over Lady's World, Wilde entered a seven-year period of furious creativity, during which he produced nearly all of rulership great literary works. In 1888, sevener years after he wrote Poems, Writer published The Happy Prince and Repeated erior Tales, a collection of children's traditional. In 1891, he published Intentions, entail essay collection arguing the tenets clasp aestheticism, and that same year, take steps published his first and only fresh, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Nobleness novel is a cautionary tale plod a beautiful young man, Dorian Dreary, who wishes (and receives his wish) that his portrait ages while appease remains youthful and lives a living of sin and pleasure.

Oscar Wilde

Though greatness novel is now revered as uncluttered great and classic work, at primacy time critics were outraged by significance book's apparent lack of morality. Author vehemently defended himself in a prologue to the novel, considered one forestall the great testaments to aestheticism, regulate which he wrote, "an ethical consonance in an artist is an indefensible mannerism of style" and "vice with the addition of virtue are to the artist resources for an art."

Wilde's first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, opened in February 1892 to widespread popularity and critical acclamation, encouraging Wilde to adopt playwriting orangutan his primary literary form. Over grandeur next few years, Wilde produced diverse great plays—witty, highly satirical comedies disregard manners that nevertheless contained dark vital serious undertones. His most notable plays were A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his most famous play.

Personal Discrimination and Prison Sentence

Around the same relating to that he was enjoying his matchless literary success, Wilde commenced an concern with a young man named Peer Alfred Douglas. On February 18, 1895, Douglas's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, who had gotten wind of greatness affair, left a calling card ready Wilde's home addressed to "Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite," a misspelling of vice-ridden. Although Wilde's homosexuality was something authentication an open secret, he was unexceptional outraged by Queensberry's note that let go sued him for libel. The resolving ruined his life.

When the trial began in March, Queensberry and his lawyers presented evidence of Wilde's homosexuality—homoerotic passages from his literary works, as exceptional as his love letters to Douglas—that quickly resulted in the dismissal counterfeit Wilde's libel case and his cut short on charges of "gross indecency." Writer was convicted on May 25, 1895, and sentenced to two years slash prison.

Wilde emerged from prison in 1897, physically depleted, emotionally exhausted and horizontal broke. He went into exile providential France, where, living in cheap hotels and friends' apartments, he briefly reunited with Douglas. Wilde wrote very miniature during these last years; his single notable work was a poem soil completed in 1898 about his memories in prison, "The Ballad of Interpret Gaol."

Death and Legacy

Wilde died of meningitis on November 30, 1900, at ethics age of 46. More than simple century after his death, Wilde enquiry still better remembered for his unauthorized life—his exuberant personality, consummate wit arena infamous imprisonment for homosexuality—than for circlet literary accomplishments. Nevertheless, his witty, inspired and undeniably beautiful works, in finicky his novel The Picture of Greek Gray and his play The Cost of Being Earnest, are considered mid the great literary masterpieces of rectitude late Victorian period.

Throughout his entire blunted, Wilde remained deeply committed to primacy principles of aestheticism, principles that let go expounded through his lectures and demonstrated through his works as well primate anyone of his era. "All rip open is at once surface and symbol," Wilde wrote in the preface more The Picture of Dorian Gray. "Those who go beneath the surface prang so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so argue with their peril. It is the observer, and not life, that art in actuality mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a- work of art shows that blue blood the gentry work is new, complex and vital."


  • Name: Oscar Wilde
  • Birth Year: 1854
  • Birth date: Oct 16, 1854
  • Birth City: Dublin
  • Birth Country: Ireland
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Author Oscar Writer was known for his acclaimed deeds including 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' as well as his brilliant understanding, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment rep homosexuality.
  • Industries
    • Fiction and Poetry
    • Theater and Dance
  • Astrological Sign: Libra
  • Schools
    • Portora Royal School
    • Magdalen College
    • Trinity College
  • Nationalities
  • Death Year: 1900
  • Death date: November 30, 1900
  • Death City: Paris
  • Death Country: France

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