Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer and wit, the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and of comedies such as Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. The most quoted talker of late Victorian London, a champion of 'art for art's sake', he was sentenced to two years' hard labour in 1895 for 'gross indecency' with men, and died in exile in Paris.
Genres
novels and stories, drama
Works
The Happy Prince and Other Tales, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Dublin and Oxford
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a famous eye and ear surgeon; his mother, Jane, wrote patriotic poems under the name Speranza and held a literary salon. Oscar won scholarships to Trinity College, Dublin, then to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took a double first in classics and won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.
At Oxford he came under the influence of the critics John Ruskin and Walter Pater, and began to cultivate the pose of the aesthete, with long hair, velvet suits and rooms full of blue china. He said he found it harder every day to live up to his blue china.
The aesthete
Settling in London, Wilde made himself famous before he had written anything of note, through his conversation and his clothes; he was caricatured in Punch and in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Patience. In 1882 he went on a year-long lecture tour of the United States and Canada, speaking about the decorative arts to miners as well as society ladies.
In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, with whom he had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. He edited a magazine, The Woman's World, and wrote fairy tales for his children, among them The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant, as well as essays on art and criticism in dialogue form.
Dorian Gray and the comedies
The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel, appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890: a beautiful young man remains unchanged while his portrait ages and records his sins. Critics attacked it as immoral; Wilde replied in a preface of epigrams to the book edition of 1891, arguing that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
His comedies then conquered the London stage: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and, in February 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest, a farce about invented identities often considered the most perfect comedy in English. He also wrote Salomé in French, a play banned in England.
Trials, prison and exile
Wilde had a long relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the Marquess of Queensberry, left a card at his club in February 1895 accusing him of posing as a sodomite. Wilde sued for libel, lost, and was then himself prosecuted under the law against 'gross indecency' between men. In May 1895 he was sentenced to two years' hard labour.
In prison, in Reading Gaol, he wrote a long letter to Douglas, later published as De Profundis. Released in 1897, ruined and in poor health, he left England for ever, wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol under a pseudonym, and lived in France and Italy under the name Sebastian Melmoth. He died in a Paris hotel on 30 November 1900, aged forty-six. In 2017 he was among the men posthumously pardoned under British law.
Anecdotes
Nothing to declare
According to a well-known story, when Wilde arrived in New York in January 1882 for his lecture tour, a customs officer asked whether he had anything to declare, and he answered that he had nothing to declare except his genius. The remark is not recorded in the newspapers of the time and appeared only years later, but it became one of the most famous things he never certainly said.
The wallpaper
In his last weeks, in the shabby Hôtel d'Alsace in Paris, Wilde is said to have remarked that he and the wallpaper of his room were fighting a duel to the death, and that one or other of them had to go. He died there a few weeks later.
A tomb covered in kisses
Wilde is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, under a large monument by the sculptor Jacob Epstein. For years admirers left lipstick kisses on the stone, which damaged it; in 2011 a glass barrier was put up to protect the tomb.
Frequently asked questions
What are Oscar Wilde's most famous works?
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), the comedies The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, the fairy tale The Happy Prince, the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol and the prison letter De Profundis.
Why was Oscar Wilde sent to prison?
In 1895 he was convicted of 'gross indecency' with other men, under a law that made homosexual relations a crime in Britain, and sentenced to two years' hard labour.
Where did Oscar Wilde die?
In Paris, at the Hôtel d'Alsace, on 30 November 1900. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery.
Was Oscar Wilde Irish?
Yes. He was born and educated in Dublin, although he made his career in London.