Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish poet, novelist, and writer of plays and short stories.

Biography

His father was a surgeon and founder of a hospital in Dublin, and his mother was a writer who was active in the early movement for women's rights. Wilde studied at Trinity College Dublin and Magdalen College Oxford, receiving his BA in 1878.

Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884, and they had two sons, but the relationship ended in 1893. Wilde then had a romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, which eventually led to a conviction for homosexuality and indecency in 1895 for which he was sentenced to two years hard labor. He later wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis about his experiences in prison.

Wilde died in 1900, three years after his release from prison. In the past he was thought to have died of syphilis, but more recent studies by Dr Ashley Robins of the University of Cape Town in South Africa report that he died of meningoencephalitis, following a serious ear infection.

Friends who visited him during the last days of his life have reported several versions of his 'dying words', including:

"My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go." "I am dying beyond my means." "I can’t even afford to die."

As he was dying, he received absolution from a Roman Catholic priest, Father Cuthbert Dunne.

Wilde's Sexuality

Wilde's sexual orientation has been debated over the years and some considered him as either bisexual, homosexual, and paederastic. Wilde himself felt he belonged to a culture of male love inspired by the Greek paederastic tradition. This tradition believed that it was an adult male's duty to bring boys into manhood via sexuality. In describing his own sexual identity, Wilde used the term Socratic. He may have had significant sexual relationships with Frank Miles, Constance Lloyd (Wilde's wife), Robert Baldwin Ross, and Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde also had numerous sexual encounters with working-class male youths, who were often called rent boys.

Wit

Wilde was a well known playwright and celebrity, and is still renowned for his wit today. Some of his lines in stories such as The Picture of Dorian Gray are still often quoted:

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."

Other memorable lines from The Critic as Artist include:

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

"There is no sin except stupidity."

"...nothing worth knowing can be taught."

Wilde's most frequently-produced play is the high comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. This includes such gems as:

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

"London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years."

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"

Works of Oscar Wilde

Plays

• Lady Windermere's Fan
• A Woman of No Importance
• An Ideal Husband
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• Salomé

Other Works

• The Canterville Ghost
• The Happy Prince
• Lord Arthur Saville's Crime
• Intentions
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A House of Pomegranates
• The Soul of Man under Socialism
• Ballad of Reading Gaol
• De Profundis
• The Rise of Historical Criticism
• The Letters of Oscar Wilde