(1854-1900)
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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) |
Oscar Wilde was born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde on October 16, 1854 in Dublin. He was the son of Sir William (1815-1876), a famous eye specialist, and Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1821?-1896).
He attended Trinity College in Dublin from 1870-1874, and then studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. While a scholar there, he toured Italy and Greece and published his first work in verse and prose, and won the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna" in 1878. He graduated with a first-class B.A. in Literae Humaniores ("Greats") in 1878.
He moved to London soon afterwards, and published a book of poetry, Poems, in 1881. The next year, he embarked on a lecture tour of the United States and Canada. In 1883 his first play, Vera; or, the Nihilist, premiered in New York, but closed after only a week.
On May 29, 1884, he married Constance Mary Lloyd (1858-1898), daughter of an English lawyer and an Irish mother; they honeymooned in Paris. Constance was active as a writer of children's books, in a variety of women's social and political associations, and as a hostess of their distinguished dinner parties (Guests included Whistler, Sargent, Burne-Jones, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, Lillie Langtry, Swinburne, Ruskin, and Browning). Their first son, Cyril, was born in 1885, and their second, Vyvyan, was born the next year. In 1886, he met Robert Ross, a young homosexual who became one of Wilde's closest friends and his literary executor.
Wilde became a regular reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette from 1885-1890, and edited the Woman's World magazine from 1887-1889. In 1890, his next drama, The Duchess of Padua, premiered anonymously and failed in New York. That same year, however, The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, and was published in book form in 1891. This was the year that his writing career really took off. In 1891, Wilde also published Intentions (including the essay "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist"), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, and The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
That same year, he met Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury, strongly disapproved of his son's relationship with Wilde. In 1895, Queensbury charged Wilde with sodomy, and Wilde sued him for criminal libel, against the advice of Ross. After Queensbury was acquitted, Wilde was charged under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act and arrested; he stayed in England to face the charges despite the pleas of his friends to escape to France. At his first trial in May, the jury was unable to reach a verdict and a new trial was ordered. That same month, Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years at hard labor. His wife and sons changed their last name to "Holland." While in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, which was not published until after his death.
After his release, Wilde moved to France, where he was briefly reunited with Douglas. In 1900, he had an ear operation, which led to an infection. Soon after being received into the Roman Catholic Church, he died of cerebral meningitis on November 30 in Paris. He was buried in Bagneux Cemetery in Paris, but was reinterred in the French National Cemetery at Pére Lachaise in 1909.