Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.

Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

On October 16, 1854 Oscar (Fingal O’Flaghertie Wills) Wilde was born in Dublin. He is the son of Dr. William Wilde and the Irish Nationalist poet Jane F. Wilde (known as "Speranza", her pen name). Oscar grew up with very high expectations of him by his mother. He was enrolled at Trinity College, where he graduated by the age of seventeen and continued his schooling on a scholarship to Oxford. At Oxford he was known as aesthete. Under the influence of the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century, Oscar found the notions of "art for art’s sake" and dedicating one’s life to art suitable to his temperament and talents.

Although Oscar didn’t have any substantial achievements in his to be well known from 1878 to 1881, he was still quite popular in London. He categorized himself into the class of people labeled as "the beautiful people." As a "beautiful [person]" he wore outrageous clothes, passed himself off as an art critic and aesthete, and built a reputation for saying shocking things and doing amusing things. These "beautiful people" were often called dandies, wearing clothes similar to Wilde’s manner of dress: velvet coat, knee breeches, silk stockings, pale green tie, shoulder length hair, loose silk shirts, and a lily he occasionally would carry. Oscar’s popularity, flamboyance, and of course literary talent led him closer and closer to the fame he desired.

Oscar published his first volume of poems in 1881. In 1882, upon arriving in New York City, he began a yearlong tour of North America. His lectures were more on aestheticism and "art for art’s sake" than on the strength of his reputation as a writer. W...

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...e "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (pronounced "redding jail"), a poem that explored the harsh nature of prison life. It was published anonymously under the pseudonym of C33 (Wilde’s prison number), and became his last significant work.

Oscar Wilde died at the age of 46 on November 30, 1990 of cerebral meningitis.

Bibliography

Beckson, Karl. Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890’s. Vintage Books, New York, 1966.

Charlesworth, Barbara. Dark Passages-The Decadent Consciousness in Victorian Literature. The University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wisconsin, 1965.

Harris, Frank. Oscar Wilde. Dorset Press, New York, 1989.

Montgomery Hyde, H. Oscar Wilde- The Aftermath. Farrar, Strauss & Company, New York, 1963.

University Books. The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde- The verbatim Transcripts and an introduction by H. Montgomery Hyde. University Books, New York, January 1956.