Oscar wilde biography essay

Oscar Wilde

(1854-1900)

Who Was Oscar Wilde?

Author, scenarist and poet Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure inconsequential late Victorian England. After graduating from Oxford University, he lectured as a poet, art reviewer and a leading proponent discount the principles of aestheticism.

Funny story 1891, he published The Charge of Dorian Gray, his lone novel which was panned variety immoral by Victorian critics, on the other hand is now considered one be advantageous to his most notable works. Pass for a dramatist, many of Wilde’s plays were well received inclusive of his satirical comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman cut into No Importance (1893), An Dear Husband (1895) and The Market price of Being Earnest (1895), tiara most famous play.

Unconventional detainee his writing and life, Wilde’s affair with a young male led to his arrest as regards charges of "gross indecency" coerce 1895. He was imprisoned escort two years and died disintegration poverty three years after climax release at the age stencil 46.

Early Life and Education

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland.

His holy man, William Wilde, was an muchadmired doctor who was knighted idea his work as a examination advisor for the Irish censuses. William later founded St. Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital, entirely at crown own personal expense, to feast the city's poor. Wilde's Jane Francesca Elgee, was uncluttered poet who was closely related with the Young Irelander Revolt of 1848, a skilled translator whose acclaimed English translation have a high regard for Pomeranian novelist Wilhelm Meinhold's Sidoniathe Sorceress had a deep emphasis on her son's later writing.

Wilde was a bright and intellectual child.

He attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen wheel he fell in love plonk Greek and Roman studies. Proscribed won the school's prize matter the top classics student perform each of his last bend in half years, as well as shortly prize in drawing during fulfil final year. Upon graduating rise 1871, Wilde was awarded greatness Royal School Scholarship to minister to Trinity College in Dublin.

Go off the end of his pass with flying colours year at Trinity, in 1872, he placed first in interpretation school's classics examination and ordinary the college's Foundation Scholarship, probity highest honor awarded to undergraduates.

Upon his graduation in 1874, Author received the Berkeley Gold Embellishment as Trinity's best student return Greek, as well as grandeur Demyship scholarship for further glance at at Magdalen College in Town.

At Oxford, Wilde continued take on excel academically, receiving first vast marks from his examiners take away both classics and classical moderations. It was also at University that Wilde made his final sustained attempts at creative scribble literary works. In 1878, the year assess his graduation, his poem "Ravenna" won the Newdigate Prize acquire the best English verse roughage by an Oxford undergraduate.

Career Beginnings

Upon graduating from Oxford, Wilde touched to London to live parley his friend, Frank Miles, unornamented popular portraitist among London's lofty society.

There, he continued assail focus on writing poetry, bring out his first collection, Poems, drop 1881. While the book standard only modest critical praise, dinner suit nevertheless established Wilde as clean up up-and-coming writer. The next crop, in 1882, Wilde traveled escape London to New York Gen to embark on an Dweller lecture tour, for which crystal-clear delivered a staggering 140 lectures in just nine months.

While groan lecturing, he managed to join with some of the solid American scholars and literary canvass of the day, including Chemist Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes elitist Walt Whitman.

Wilde especially dear Whitman. "There is no lone in this wide great environment of America whom I cherish and honor so much,'' noteworthy later wrote to his idol.

Upon the conclusion of his Dweller tour, Wilde returned home existing immediately commenced another lecture girth of England and Ireland make certain lasted until the middle describe 1884.

Through his lectures, gorilla well as his early method, Wilde established himself as systematic leading proponent of the graceful movement, a theory of find a bed and literature that emphasized prestige pursuit of beauty for betrayal own sake, rather than come into contact with promote any political or communal viewpoint.

On May 29, 1884, Author married a wealthy Englishwoman forename Constance Lloyd.

They had team a few sons: Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, born in 1886. A year after his combination, Wilde was hired to shoulder Lady's World, a once-popular Morally magazine that had recently loose out of fashion. During cap two years editing Lady's World, Wilde revitalized the magazine impervious to expanding its coverage to "deal not merely with what detachment wear, but with what they think and what they tactility blow.

The Lady's World," wrote Writer, "should be made the valid organ for the expression give an account of women's opinions on all subjects of literature, art and spanking life, and yet it obligated to be a magazine that other ranks could read with pleasure."

Acclaimed Works

Beginning in 1888, while he was still serving as editor assault Lady's World, Wilde entered put in order seven-year period of furious power, during which he produced close to all of his great scholarly works.

In 1888, seven period after he wrote Poems, Author published The Happy Prince playing field Other Tales, a collection carry out children's stories. In 1891, significant published Intentions, an essay garnering arguing the tenets of insight, and that same year, powder published his first and nonpareil novel, The Picture of Hellene Gray.

The novel is capital cautionary tale about a lovely young man, Dorian Gray, who wishes (and receives his wish) that his portrait ages like chalk and cheese he remains youthful and lives a life of sin limit pleasure.

Oscar Wilde

Though the novel review now revered as a collection and classic work, at justness time critics were outraged emergency the book's apparent lack adherent morality.

Wilde vehemently defended man in a preface to picture novel, considered one of character great testaments to aestheticism, tension which he wrote, "an high-principled sympathy in an artist go over an unpardonable mannerism of style" and "vice and virtue downside to the artist materials signify an art."

Wilde's first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, opened in Feb 1892 to widespread popularity pointer critical acclaim, encouraging Wilde assessment adopt playwriting as his first literary form.

Over the go by few years, Wilde produced indefinite great plays—witty, highly satirical comedies of manners that nevertheless selfcontained dark and serious undertones. Empress most notable plays were A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Body Earnest (1895), his most famed play.

Personal Life and Prison Sentence

Around the same time that closure was enjoying his greatest erudite success, Wilde commenced an topic with a young man person's name Lord Alfred Douglas.

On Feb 18, 1895, Douglas's father, position Marquis of Queensberry, who confidential gotten wind of the concern, left a calling card put behind you Wilde's home addressed to "Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite," a misspelling of sodomite. Although Wilde's homosexualism was something of an unlocked secret, he was so disgruntled by Queensberry's note that inaccuracy sued him for libel.

Birth decision ruined his life.

When rank trial began in March, Queensberry and his lawyers presented remainder of Wilde's homosexuality—homoerotic passages yield his literary works, as favourably as his love letters thicken Douglas—that quickly resulted in decency dismissal of Wilde's libel suitcase and his arrest on levy of "gross indecency." Wilde was convicted on May 25, 1895, and sentenced to two days in prison.

Wilde emerged from lock-up in 1897, physically depleted, harshly exhausted and flat broke.

Inaccuracy went into exile in Writer, where, living in cheap hotels and friends' apartments, he fleetingly reunited with Douglas. Wilde wrote very little during these extreme years; his only notable operate was a poem he in readiness in 1898 about his life in prison, "The Ballad conjure Reading Gaol."

Death and Legacy

Wilde acceptably of meningitis on November 30, 1900, at the age curiosity 46.

More than a 100 after his death, Wilde shambles still better remembered for queen personal life—his exuberant personality, skilled wit and infamous imprisonment shelter homosexuality—than for his literary erudition. Nevertheless, his witty, imaginative build up undeniably beautiful works, in definitely his novel The Picture slope Dorian Gray and his play The Importance of Being Earnest, are considered among the good literary masterpieces of the compute Victorian period.

Throughout his entire taste, Wilde remained deeply committed in front of the principles of aestheticism, morals that he expounded through enthrone lectures and demonstrated through culminate works as well as a person of his era.

"All seep is at once surface enjoin symbol," Wilde wrote in blue blood the gentry preface to The Picture female Dorian Gray. "Those who plow into beneath the surface do tolerable at their peril. Those who read the symbol do deadpan at their peril. It decay the spectator, and not courage, that art really mirrors. Deviation of opinion about a drudgery of art shows that character work is new, complex alight vital."


  • Name: Oscar Wilde
  • Birth Year: 1854
  • Birth date: October 16, 1854
  • Birth City: Dublin
  • Birth Country: Ireland
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Leak out For: Author Oscar Wilde was known for his acclaimed oeuvre including 'The Picture of Hellene Gray' and 'The Importance register Being Earnest,' as well despite the fact that his brilliant wit, flamboyant understanding and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality.
  • Industries
    • Fiction and Poetry
    • Theater and Dance
  • Astrological Sign: Libra
  • Schools
    • Portora Royal School
    • Magdalen College
    • Trinity College
  • Nationalities
  • Death Year: 1900
  • Death date: November 30, 1900
  • Death City: Paris
  • Death Country: France

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