Oscar Wilde is famous for many aspects of his life, including his childhood and adolescence, his marriage and dedication as a father, his homosexual encounters and imprisonment and for his fantastic skill to bewilder his audience. Wilde was a flamboyant nineteenth century writer known for his ability to create brilliant plays, imaginative and moral stories, and overall his incredible talent as a master in all forms of literature.
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854. His full name at birth was Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde (Small vii). Wilde’s parents were well-known, upstanding members of society. His mother, Lady Jane Francesca Elgee, was a poetess and a journalist. His father, Sir William Wilde, was an eminent physician (Wilde ix). When he was eleven years old, Oscar was enrolled at Portora Royal School. As a young man, he attended Trinity College, Magdalen College, and Oxford (Small vii-i). After graduating in 1874, Wilde moved to London (Wilde ix). He was invited to America to go on a lecture tour. After his return from lecturing, Wilde went to Paris. There, he became acquainted with now-famous artists Degas, Pissaro, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Victor Hugo (“Wilde”).
Wilde met Constance Lloyd in London in 1879. Five years later, in 1884, they were married in London. A year after their marriage, Constance gave birth to a son, Cyril Wilde. In 1886, another son, Vyvyan Wilde was born. Oscar Wilde is known for his devotion as a father. He remained incredibly dedicated to his children until his death (Small vii-i).
In 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred Douglas or “Bosie”, as he was affectionately called. Wilde was very attracted to “Bosie”. They began a not-so-secret affair (Small vii-ix). Douglas’s father, The Mar...
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...tely his lonely and untimely end.
Works Cited
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Small, Ian. Complete Short Fiction. London: Penguin Group, 1994. Print.
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Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003. Print.
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Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. Peter Raby, ed. Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. London: Oxford University Press, 1995. 247-307.
Oscar (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills) Wilde was a witty, eccentric, and “dandy” man who was born in Dublin on October 16, 1954. The names Oscar and Fingal originate from Irish folklore. His main calling in life was to diverge from the strict Victorian tradition and society. Wilde was raised in a busy upper class Victorian household where artists, writers, and professionals often visited. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a distinguished surgeon who was Queen Victoria’s oculist and was later knighted for founding a hospital. Wilde’s mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a famous a writer and novelist advocating Irish independence.
Ruddick, Nicholas. "'The Peculiar Quality of My Genius': Degeneration, Decadence, and Dorian Gray in 1890-91." Oscar Wilde: The Man, His Writings, and His World. New York: AMS, 2003. 125-37. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 164. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Smith, Emily Esfahani. Wilde in an hour. 1st ed. Hanover: In an Hour, 2009. Print.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray; For Love of the King. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993.
Baselga, Mariano. “Oscar Wilde: The Satire of Social Habits.” In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, England: Colin Smuthe, 1994: pp. 13-20.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a rich story which can be viewed through many literary and cultural lenses. Oscar Wilde himself purposefully filled his novel with a great many direct and indirect allusions to the literary culture of his times, so it seems appropriate to look back at his story - both the novel and the 1945 film version - in this way.
Wilde, Oscar. "The Importance of Being Earnest." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
Wilde, Oscar, and Michael Patrick. Gillespie. The Picture of Dorian Gray: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds, Reviews and Reactions, Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2007. Print.
Woodcock, George. The Paradox of Oscar Wilde. London-New York: T.V. Boardman and Co., Ltd., 1950.
Set in the late 19th Century, Oscar Wilde wrote his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a story about debauchery and corruption of innocence and well known as a "Gothic melodrama." Violent twists and a sneaky plot make this novel a distinct reflection of human pride and corrupt nature.
Oscar Wilde was born in October 16, 1854, in the mid era of the Victorian period—which was when Queen Victoria ruled. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.While she ruined Britain, the nation rise than never before, and no one thought that she was capable of doing that. “The Victorian era was both good and bad due to the rise and fall of the empires and many pointless wars were fought. During that time, culture and technology improved greatly” (Anne Shepherd, “Overview of the Victorian Era”). During this time period of English, England was facing countless major changes, in the way people lived and thought during this era. Today, Victorian society is mostly known as practicing strict religious or moral behavior, authoritarian, preoccupied with the way they look and being respectable. They were extremely harsh in discipline and order at all times. Determination became a usual Victorian quality, and was part of Victorian lifestyle such as religion, literature and human behavior. However, Victorian has its perks, for example they were biased, contradictory, pretense, they cared a lot of about what economic or social rank a person is, and people were not allowed to express their sexuality. Oscar Wilde was seen as an icon of the Victorian age. In his plays and writings, he uses wit, intelligence and humor. Because of his sexuality he suffered substantially the humiliation and embarrassment of imprisonment. He was married and had an affair with a man, which back then was an act of vulgarity and grossness. But, that was not what Oscar Wilde was only known for; he is remembered for criticizing the social life of the Victorian era, his wit and his amazing skills of writing. Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” typifies the Vi...
Wilde, O. (1945). The picture of Dorian Gray. The Electronic Classics Series, The Pennsylvania State University. p. 3/ Retrieved January 3, 2014 from http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/oscar-wilde/dorian-gray.pdf