About Oscar Wilde
Birth name: Oscar Fungal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
Also known as: Oscar Wilde
Birth date: October 16, 1854
Death date: November 30, 1900
Parents: Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee
Siblings: (full) William and Isola; (half) Henry, Emily and Mary
By the time William Wilde was was 28, he had graduated as a doctor, completed a
voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe, North Africa and the Middle East, studied at
Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, written two books, and been appointed medical
advisor to the Irish Census of 1841. When the medical statistics were published
two years later they contained data which had not being collected in any other
country at the time, and as result William became the Assistant Commissioner to
the 1851 Census. He held the same position for the two succeeding Censuses, and
in 1864 he was knighted for his work on them. When William opened a Dublin
practice specializing in ear and eye diseases, he felt he should make some
provision for the free treatment of the city's poor. In 1844, he founded St.
Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital, built entirely at his own expense.
Before he married, William fathered three children. Henry Wilson was born in 1838, Emily in 1847 and Mary in 1849. To William's credit, he provided financial support for all of them. He paid for Henry's education and medical studies, eventually hiring him into St. Mark's Hospital as an assistant. Sadly, Mary and Emily, who were raised by William's brother, both died in a fire at the ages of 22 and 24.
Oscar's mother,
Jane Francesca Elgee, first gained attention in 1846 when she began writing
revolutionary poems under the pseudonym "Speranza" for a weekly Irish
newspaper, The Nation. In 1848, as the country's famine worsened and the Year of
Revolution took hold of Europe, the newspaper offices were raided and had to
close. Jane, who was also gifted linguist with working knowledge of the
major European languages, went on to translate Wilhelm Meinhold's gothic horror
novel Sidonia the Sorceress. Oscar would later read the translation with
relish, and draw on it for the darker elements of his own work.
Jane's first child, William "Willie" Charles Kingsbury, was born on
September 26, 1852 and her second, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie, on October 16,
1854. The daughter she had longed for, Isola Emily Francesca, was delivered on
April 2, 1857. Ten years later, however, Emily died from a sudden fever. Oscar
was profoundly affected by the loss of his sister, and for his lifetime he
carried a lock of her hair sealed in a decorated envelope.
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Willie and Oscar attended the Portora
Royal School at Enniskillen, where Oscar excelled at studying the
classics, taking top prize his last two years, and also earning a second
prize in drawing. In 1871, Oscar was awarded the Royal School Scholarship
to attend Trinity College in Dublin. Again, he did particularly well in
his classics courses, placing first in his examinations in 1872 and
earning the highest honor the college could bestow on an undergraduate, a
Foundation Scholarship. In 1874, Oscar crowned his successes at Trinity
with two final achievements. He won the college's Berkeley Gold
Medal for Greek and was awarded a Demyship scholarship to Magdalen College
in Oxford. |
Oscar's father died on April 19, 1876, leaving the family financially strapped. Henry, William's eldest son, paid the mortgage on the family's house and supported them until his sudden death in 1877. Meanwhile, Oscar continued to do well at Oxford. He was awarded the Newdigate prize for his poem, Ravenna, and a First Class in both his "Mods" and "Greats" by his examiners. After graduation, Oscar moved to London to live with his friend Frank Miles, a popular high society portrait painter. In 1881, he published his first collection of poetry. Poems received mixed reviews by critics, but helped to move Oscar's writing career along.
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In December 1881,oscar
sailed for New
York to travel across the United States and deliver a series of lectures
on aesthetics. The 50-lecture tour was originally scheduled to last four
months, but stretched to nearly a year, with over 140 lectures given in
260 days. In between lectures he made time to meet with Henry Longfellow,
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Whitman. He also arranged for his play, Vera,
to be staged in New York the following year. When he returned from
America, Oscar spent three months in Paris writing a blank-verse tragedy
that had been commissioned by the actress Mary Anderson. When he sent it
to her, however, she turned it down. He then set off on a lecture tour of
Britain and Ireland. |
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On
May 29, 1884, Oscar married Constance Lloyd. Constance was four years
younger than Oscar and the daughter of a prominent barrister who died when
she was sixteen. She was well-read, spoke several European languages and
had an outspoken, independent mind. Oscar and Constance had two sons in
quick succession, Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886. With a family to
support, Oscar accepted a job revitalizing The Woman's World
magazine, where he worked from 1887-1889. The next six years were to
become the most creative period of his life. He published two collections
of children's stories, The Happy Prince And Other Tales (1888), and
The House Of Pomegranates (1892). His first and only novel, The
Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in an American magazine in 1890
to a storm of critical protest. He expanded the storyl and had it
published in book form the following year. Its implied homoerotic theme
was was considered ver immoral by the Victorians and played a considerable
part in his later legal trials. Oscar's first play, Lady Windermere's
Fan, opened in February 1892. Its financial and critical success
prompted him to continue to write for the theater. His subsequent plays
included A Woman Of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895),
and The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895). These plays were all
highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar as a playwright. |
In the summer of 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, the third son of
the Marquis of Queensberry. Bosie was well acquainted with Oscar's novel Dorian
Gray and was an undergraduate at Oxford. They soon became lovers and were
inseparable until Wilde's arrest four years later. In April 1895, Oscar sued
Bosie's father for libel as the Marquis had accused him of homosexuality. Oscar
withdrew his case but was himself arrested and convicted of gross indecency and
sentenced to two years hard labor. Constance took the children to Switzerland
and reverted to an old family name, "Holland."
Upon his release, Oscar wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a response to
the agony he experienced in prison. It was published shortly before Constance's
death in 1898. He and Bosie reunited briefly, but Oscar mostly spent the last
three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in
cheap hotels. Sadly, he was unable to rekindle his creative fires. When a
recurrent ear infection became serious several years later, meningitis set in,
and Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900
