He amused his audiences, and in return they offered standing ovations at his plays. Just prior to his death in Paris on November 30, 1900, at the age of 46, Wilde converted to Roman Catholicism.

He was born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde on October 16, 1854, at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Wilde was born of professional and literary parents. One of these young men was the unemployed Charles Parker. Wilde, for various reasons, remained in England and was arrested. Because of this, Wilde left Ireland to return in the future only twice due to job issues. In 1891, Oscar Wilde met the young man who would change his life forever. Wilde could not agree more. Son of Sir William Wilde, Ireland’s most famous surgeon in Ophthalmology and Otology, and Jane Wilde, a sympathizer poet of Irish Nationalism. His parents were well known and attracted a degree of gossip for their extravagant lifestyles.

Eager for further acclaim, Wilde agreed to lecture in the United States and Canada in 1882, announcing on his arrival at customs in New York City that he had “nothing to declare but his genius.” Despite widespread hostility in the press to his languid poses and aesthetic costume of velvet jacket, knee breeches, and black silk stockings, Wilde for 12 months exhorted the Americans to love beauty and art; then he returned to Great Britain to lecture on his impressions of America.

Previous Lord Alfred Douglas (known as Bosie) was the 21-year-old son of the Marquis of Queensberry. The names of working class people, however, were readily identified aloud. On February 28, the Marquis of Queensberry left a card for Wilde at his club, the Albemarle Club. The Aesthetic Movement, an avant-garde philosophy of the 1870s, was in full bloom, and its advocates were critical of the heavy, moralistic Victorian taste.

Wilde rented homes for them outside London, and when they were apart he wrote letters and was careless with their whereabouts. He settled in the small village of Berneval-sur-Mer near Dieppe, France, and sent letters to newspapers on prison reform while writing his greatest poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."

By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Rumors about Wilde's secret life were already circulating in 1895, but he was still very amusing, and as long as his indiscretions were kept quiet, society did not care. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon; his mother, Jane Francisca Elgee Wilde, wrote popular poetry and other work under the pseudonym (pen name) Speranza.

Oscar Wilde came from a prominent family. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. That is their tragedy. The Importance of Being Earnest returned to the West End with revivals in 1902, 1909, 1911, and 1913. Surgery for an acute and life-threatening infection, which had moved into the mastoid, was allegedly performed on October 10, 1900, and was documented in Wilde's letters.

Occasionally, he lectured. Influenced by Keats and his ideas of truth and beauty, he believed art should be loved and appreciated for its own sake. By now Wilde had lost 30 pounds, and was not doing well physically or emotionally.

This book had an incredible reception in both the critics and the public because in a few weeks they managed to sell four editions. He and Bosie reunited, and Constance died in April 1898. All women become like their mothers. In 1864, his father Wille Wilde was knighted for his services to medicine.

Although it is true that during his time at Trinity College he had already published in magazines such as Dublin University Magazine and Kottabos, and had won the Oxford Newdigate Prize in Oxford for his poem Ravenna, it was not until 1881 when he would publish Poems, his first book. His cell was unsanitary, and his bed was nothing more than wooden boards.

In 1894 he published Phrases and Philosophies for the use of youth, and in 1895 they premiered An Ideal Husband and The importance of being Ernest.

Oscar was the second of three children of one of the most important families of the Anglo-Irish society from the city of Dublin. In his last moments of life, he decided to convert to Catholicism and be baptized. Wilde was treated before and during his imprisonment for a chronic ear infection. He spoke in New York, Chicago, Boston, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Omaha (Nebraska), Philadelphia, and Washington. Wilde went on to Trinity College where he extended his interest in the classics and his long list of intellectual accomplishments.
From August through September 1894, he wrote The Importance of Being Earnest at the seaside resort of Worthing, Sussex, his wife and children enjoying the holiday with him. In 1874, he would receive a scholarship with which he could enter the Magdalen College in Oxford, an institution from which he would obtain the title of Bachelor of Arts in 1878 with honors.

His influence on Wilde's social conscience is undeniable, and it permeates Wilde's plays and his essay, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." He was transferred to Wandsworth Prison. And in their comic opera Patience, Gilbert and Sullivan based the character Bunthorne, a “fleshly poet,” partly on Wilde.
Leaving Oxford, Wilde was now ready to take on the world with a classical education and an unequivocal inclination toward the unconventional. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Oscar Wilde Biography Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854, and died in Paris, France, on November 30, 1900. Character Map, Next The food was unspeakable, and he could only read the Bible, a prayer book, and a hymn book. The Importance of Being Earnest opened on February 14 at St. James' Theatre, beginning a run of 86 performances to standing ovations. The libel trial was disastrous. Wilde enjoyed unprecedented success in the London theatres from 1893 to 1895. Soon the periodical Punch made him the satiric object of its antagonism to the Aesthetes for what was considered their unmasculine devotion to art.

But Wilde’s greatest successes were his society comedies. Allowed to mingle and eat with the guests, they learned to value intellectual and witty conversation, an influence that would have profound and long-lasting effects on young Oscar Wilde. So, Wilde went back to England, arranging a lecture tour of Great Britain and Ireland, where he encountered a previous acquaintance, Constance Lloyd, who would become his wife — for better or for worse.

The immediate aftermath of the trial was a total disgrace for Wilde. She wrote patriotic Irish verse under the pseudonym "Speranza". One would think all this good luck, publicity, and commercial success would be enough for a respectable married man with two sons, who finally was receiving acceptance from British aristocracy. Critics charged immorality despite Dorian’s self-destruction; Wilde, however, insisted on the amoral nature of art regardless of an apparently moral ending. He was also introduced to Alfred Taylor, who lived in Bloomsbury and often had male prostitutes at his home. Like many in his generation, Wilde was determined to follow Pater’s urging “to burn always with [a] hard, gemlike flame.” But Wilde also delighted in affecting an aesthetic pose; this, combined with rooms at Oxford decorated with objets d’art, resulted in his famous remark, “Oh, would that I could live up to my blue china!”. He left the magazine in July 1889 to begin his greatest period of playwriting. When the first trial ended, Queensberry's lawyers sent a transcript of the trial to public prosecutors. Chiefly remembered today as a playwright, especially for The Importance of Being Earnest, and as the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray; Wilde's oeuvre includes criticism, poetry, children's fiction, and a large selection of reviews, lectures and journalism. Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854. As a celebrity, he dined with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton (the famous Harvard professor), and Walt Whitman. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis. By graduation he was firmly committed to the pursuit of pleasure and the careful devising of a public persona, which included unconventional clothing and the pose of a dandy. He was arrested and ordered to stand trial. He suffered a relapse in November of that year and fell into a coma, never to awaken. The court found Wilde guilty and sentenced him to two years at hard labor. However, she preferred Bram Stoker, with whom she would marry in 1878. Wilde became involved with several of these young men, who later testified against him at trial. The poems were a modest success, but the play died a quick death. In addition to the controversies that caused his sexual orientation at that time.

The same year in which it publishes his first tests and Portrait of Mr. W. H. The following year publishes his most famous work: The portrait of Dorian Gray.

Back in Dublin, Wilde would fall in love with Florence Balcombe. Oscar Wilde’s rich and dramatic portrayals of the human condition came during the height of the prosperity that swept through London in the Victorian Era of the late 19th century. While studying at Oxford in the 1870s, he gained notice as a scholar, poseur, wit, and poet and for his devotion to the Aesthetic movement, which held that art should exist for its beauty alone. In the latter, his greatest achievement, the conventional elements of farce are transformed into satiric epigrams—seemingly trivial but mercilessly exposing Victorian hypocrisies. Despite constant money problems, he maintained, as George Bernard Shaw said, “an unconquerable gaiety of soul” that sustained him, and he was visited by such loyal friends as Max Beerbohm and Robert Ross, later his literary executor; he was also reunited with Douglas. This novel was quickly followed by Intentions, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, and A House of Pomegranates. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. However, during this amazingly prolific period, Wilde was beginning to frequent literary circles that were often homosexual. Despite all this, Constance never divorced Oscar Wilde. Wilde wanted to see her and the children, but she refused because he would not give up Douglas. All rights reserved.

Wilde proved to be a master of public relations.

Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Wishing to reinforce the association, Wilde published, at his own expense, Poems (1881), which echoed, too faithfully, his discipleship to the poets Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Keats. Wilde would publish some of his first stories in this magazine. In 1891, he would publish some essays, including The Critic as Artist and The Decay of Lying, as well as two anthologies of his stories: A House of Pomegranates and Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories. In April 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan opened a play titled Patience in which a primary character, Bunthorne, was assumed to be based on Wilde. In 1886, he is said to have had his first homosexual affair with a Canadian named Robert Ross.


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