Oscar WIlde the novelist, poet, writer, journalist and playwright lived a turbulent life and was one of the greatest ”celebrities” of the late Victorian era.
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, the second of three children, was born on 16 October 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. His writer mother was Jane Francesca Agnes née Elgee and father surgeon Sir William Robert Wills Wilde. William Wilde was a specialist in diseases of the eye and ear, who opened a hospital in Dublin a year before Oscar was born. His mother was an avid writer and an activist in the women’s rights movement. His parents were popular and were constantly gossiped about for their extravagant lifestyles. Wilde attended the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ireland. By the tender age of 13, Wilde’s tastes in clothes were dandy’s. After finishing school he was awarded a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin in 1871 and won a second scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, England where he studied the classics from 1874-1878. While at Oxford Wilde began collecting blue china and peacock’s feathers. He also became more aware of his bisexual nature. Despite being jeered at for his eccentric and ”feminine” dress he enjoyed his time in Oxford and was able to develop his poetic sensibilities and love of literature. In 1878 Wilde received his B.A. and moved to London. For a living Wilde worked as an art reviewer (1881), lectured in the United States and Canada (1882), and lived in Paris (1883). Between the years 1883 and 1884 he lectured in Britain.
In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd and they had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). In 1886 Wilde became a practicing homosexual and in 1891 he became intimate with Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie" ). He was both the love of his life and the cause of his spiral downfall. As a result of practicing homosexuality (which was illegal at that time) Wilde was subject to two years of intensive labor in Wandsworth and then in Reading Gaol. He never fully recovered from the trauma and this was reflected in his writings later on. To help his family out Wilde edited in 1887-89 Woman’s World magazine. Wilde’s broken marriage ended in 1893.
Between the years 1892 and 1895 Wilde proved himself in the world of theatre with a number of very popular plays. While his stories and essays were celebrated, his greatest forte was in his plays— Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). All his plays were filled with epigrams and paradoxes.
After his release from prison in 1897 Wilde lived under the name Sebastian Melmoth in Berneval, near Dieppe, then in Paris and kept very much to himself. He wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol which was about inhumane prison conditions. Wilde died on November 30, 1900 of cerebral meningitis, broke in a cheapo Paris hotel.
