Oscar Wilde --- Biogrophy (who was he and why do I love him)
Here is a full, comprehensive biography of Oscar Wilde:
THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE
A Complete Biography
EARLY LIFE & FAMILY (1854–1871)
Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, the second of three children born to an Anglo-Irish couple: Jane, née Elgee, and Sir William Wilde.
His father, Sir William Wilde, was an eminent Victorian and a doctor of aural surgery. He was also a celebrated antiquarian, folklorist, and philanthropist who was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland. He was one of the most distinguished men in Ireland in his field, though his personal reputation was complicated by several paternity suits.
Wilde's mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, saw herself as a revolutionary and liked to trace her family through an Italian line. An Irish nationalist, she wrote under the pen name Speranza. She attracted artists like herself and established a literary salon devoted to intellectual and artistic conversations of the day, through which she brought literature, an interest in art and culture, and an elegance and appreciation for wit into the lives of her children.
Wilde had an older brother, William Robert, born in 1852, and a younger sister, Isola Francesca Emily, born in 1857. The death of his little sister Isola at age ten would devastate the young Oscar profoundly, and he later wrote the tender elegy Requiescat in her memory — a poem he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
Allowed to mingle and eat with the guests at his mother's literary salon, the Wilde children learned to value intellectual and witty conversation — an influence that would have profound and long-lasting effects on young Oscar.
EDUCATION: PORTORA AND TRINITY COLLEGE (1864–1874)
He was educated at Portora Royal School (1864–71), Trinity College, Dublin (1871–74), and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874–78).
At age eleven, he entered the exclusive Portora Royal School and began to assert the scholarship and intellect that would bring him both great celebrity and great sadness. His long interest in all things Greek began at Portora. Winning several prizes, he was already a first-rate classics scholar and ready to pursue serious studies.
At Trinity College Dublin, Wilde further distinguished himself. He extended his interest in the classics and his long list of intellectual accomplishments: he won an additional scholarship, made first class in examinations, received a composition prize for Greek verse, and the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek — the highest honour the college offered in that subject. In 1874 he received a scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford.
OXFORD & THE BIRTH OF THE AESTHETE (1874–1878)
Oxford would prove to be the making of Oscar Wilde in almost every sense. At Oxford, Wilde became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. These two men represented opposing poles of Victorian thought — Ruskin preaching art in the service of morality and society, Pater preaching art purely for art's sake — and Wilde absorbed and synthesized both, eventually siding firmly with Pater's position.
Wilde developed a public persona at Oxford that he would carry with him upon graduation. A good friend of Wilde's, David Hunter Blair, claims that his good humor, unusual capacity for pleasant talk, and Irish hospitality gained him much popularity.
There, Wilde continued to excel academically, receiving first class marks from his examiners in both classics and classical moderations. It was also at Oxford that Wilde made his first sustained attempts at creative writing. In 1878, the year of his graduation, his poem "Ravenna" won the Newdigate Prize for the best English verse composition by an Oxford undergraduate.
It was also at Oxford that Wilde's flamboyant personal style fully emerged — he famously decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, and blue china, and proclaimed his desire to live up to his own blue china, a remark that made him famous across the university even before he published a word.
LONDON: CELEBRITY AND THE AESTHETE (1878–1882)
After Oxford, Wilde moved to London and quickly made himself one of the most talked-about figures in the city. Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.
He published his first collection, Poems, in 1881. Although the book received only modest critical praise, it nevertheless established Wilde as an up-and-coming writer.
His fame had grown so large even before his major works that he was invited to tour America as a celebrity spokesman for the Aesthetic movement — remarkable given that he had published almost nothing of lasting significance at this point. His reputation was essentially one of pure personality, wit, and self-creation.
THE AMERICAN LECTURE TOUR (1882)
He worked as an art reviewer (1881), lectured in the United States and Canada (1882), and lived in Paris (1883).
The American tour was a triumph of personality. Arriving at customs in New York, Wilde reportedly declared: "I have nothing to declare except my genius." He lectured across the country on "The English Renaissance in Art" and "The Decorative Arts," drawing enormous audiences, and was simultaneously mocked and celebrated. According to biographer Michèle Mendelssohn, Wilde was the subject of anti-Irish caricature throughout his career. Harper's Weekly put a sunflower-worshipping monkey dressed as Wilde on the front of the January 1882 issue. Despite the mockery, his tour was a box-office success and firmly established him as an international figure.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE (1883–1890)
Wilde married Constance Lloyd on May 29, 1884, the same year he finished his British lecture series. They had two sons: Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, born in 1886. Multiple accounts report Wilde and his wife were very much in love, but a few years into their marriage, the writer began a series of affairs with men.
To support his family, Oscar accepted a job as the editor of Woman's World magazine, where he worked from 1887 to 1889. In 1888, he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, fairy stories written for his two sons.
These fairy tales — among them "The Happy Prince," "The Selfish Giant," and "The Nightingale and the Rose" — are today recognized as some of the most beautiful and subtly radical children's literature ever written, full of coded longing, sacrifice, and social critique.
THE GREAT CREATIVE PERIOD (1890–1895)
The early 1890s represent the most dazzling creative outpouring of Wilde's career. In a five-year period he produced work that would secure his place in literary history forever.
His first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in 1891 and received quite a negative response. This had much to do with the novel's homoerotic overtones, which caused something of a sensation amongst Victorian critics. Wilde revised and expanded the novel for its book publication, adding a preface that remains one of the greatest statements of aesthetic philosophy in the English language.
In the same year, two volumes of stories and fairy tales appeared, testifying to Wilde's extraordinary creative inventiveness: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other Stories and A House of Pomegranates. Intentions (1891), a collection of previously published essays, restated his aesthetic attitude toward art.
He wrote Salomé in French while in Paris in 1891, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage.
Wilde's greatest successes were his society comedies. Within the conventions of the French "well-made play," he employed his paradoxical, epigrammatic wit to create a form of comedy new to the 19th-century English theater.
Wilde enjoyed unprecedented success in the London theatres from 1893 to 1895. He had two plays running simultaneously in the West End: A Woman of No Importance at the Royal Theatre Haymarket, and Lady Windermere's Fan.
The Importance of Being Earnest opened on February 14 at St. James' Theatre, beginning a run of 86 performances to standing ovations. It is widely considered not only Wilde's masterpiece but one of the greatest comedies in the history of the English language.
LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS AND THE ROAD TO RUIN (1891–1895)
In 1891, Oscar Wilde met the young man who would change his life forever. Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, was the 21-year-old son of the Marquis of Queensberry. A very controversial figure, Douglas was often described as femininely beautiful, aristocratic, rich, homosexual, and poetic. His hold on Wilde has often been a subject of conjecture, but most writers believe that Wilde, 14 years Bosie's senior, was infatuated, obsessed, and besotted. By 1892, the two were together constantly. They traveled to France, Italy, and Algiers.
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.
On February 28, the Marquis of Queensberry left a card for Wilde at his club, the Albemarle Club. It read: "To Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite." Estranged from his father and hating him, Douglas encouraged Wilde to sue the Marquis for libel. Convinced he could triumph in court, Wilde declared to his lawyers that he was innocent and wanted to press the lawsuit. His friends, knowing he had been too indiscreet, urged him to go abroad with his wife until it all blew over, but Wilde intended to carry through with the case.
THE THREE TRIALS (1895)
The libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry collapsed disastrously when Queensberry's lawyers produced evidence of Wilde's relationships with young working-class men. Wilde withdrew the case, but it was too late.
Against the advice of his friends, Wilde sued for libel and lost. Wilde probably should have fled the country, as the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 had made homosexual acts punishable by up to two years' imprisonment. However, Wilde chose to stay and was arrested. Despite information about Wilde's private life and writings that emerged at the trial, the prosecution initially proved unsuccessful. However, Wilde was tried a second time, convicted, and sentenced to prison for two years.
Wilde may have remained in England for a number of reasons, including self-destructiveness, denial, desperation, and a desire for martyrdom. However, some historians have suggested that Wilde's relentless persecution by the government was a diversionary tactic, as Lord Alfred's older brother was reportedly also having a homosexual affair with Archibald Philip Primrose, Lord Rosebery, the man who would become prime minister.
In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and jailed from 1895 to 1897.
PRISON: READING GAOL (1895–1897)
The imprisonment was a catastrophe on every level — financial, physical, spiritual, and creative. His wife Constance was forced to flee the country with their children, and to change the family name, though she still hoped that Oscar would renounce his lover and return to his family on his release from prison.
During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas, it is one of the most remarkable documents in English literature — part confession, part accusation, part spiritual autobiography, and part the most heartbreaking love letter ever written.
The conditions of his imprisonment were brutal. He was forced to walk a treadmill for hours each day, sleep on a plank, and endure near-total isolation. His health began to deteriorate seriously during this period.
EXILE AND FINAL YEARS (1897–1900)
On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland.
He met Robert Ross in Dieppe, though he initially refused to rekindle his relationship with Douglas. Eventually, Wilde desired a reunion with Douglas, but was deterred by threats from his wife. When it became obvious that Constance would not allow Wilde to see his children, he agreed to reunite with Douglas.
In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. Published under the pseudonym "C.3.3." — his prison cell number — it was immediately recognized as a work of great power and sold widely.
Constance Wilde died in April 1898 following a spinal operation, before any real reconciliation could take place. Wilde was reportedly devastated. He never saw his sons again.
His last years were spent wandering between Paris, Naples, and the Swiss and Italian countryside, living on the charity of friends and a small allowance arranged by Robbie Ross. He adopted the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth — Sebastian after the martyred saint, Melmoth after the gothic wanderer of his great-uncle Charles Maturin's novel.
He spent the rest of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. He attempted to write again but found he could not. The creative spring had run dry.
DEATH (1900)
Following surgery he developed a severe case of meningitis from which he would not recover. Wilde died in Paris on November 30th, at the young age of forty-six. Robert Ross, his former lover and loyal friend, was by his side and alleged that Wilde was consciously received into the Catholic Church upon his deathbed.
Douglas arrived in Paris on December 2nd, in time for the funeral, and is said to have almost fallen into the grave when the coffin was lowered, as he was competing among others to be the "principal mourner."
Wilde was first interred at Bagneux, though his remains were later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery where they still remain. His funerary monument, designed by Jacob Epstein, is inscribed with a stanza from his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
LEGACY
Despite his fall from society's grace at the end of his life, Wilde came to be regarded as the personification of wit and sophistication.
His tomb at Père Lachaise became one of the most visited graves in the world. For decades, admirers left lipstick kisses on the white stone — so many that the monument had to be cleaned repeatedly and eventually a glass barrier was installed. The kisses continue to this day.
Wilde has been posthumously recognized as one of the greatest writers in the English language, a martyr to Victorian hypocrisy, a founding figure of queer culture, and one of the most quotable human beings who ever lived. His wit, his suffering, his courage, and his tragedy have made him arguably more famous in death than he ever was in life — which is, perhaps, exactly the sort of irony he would have appreciated.
He was 46 years old when he died. He had, in the end, burned brilliantly and briefly — a songbird, as his admirers might say, who spent his life singing into the cold and grey, only to finally find his way home.
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