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Explore the life of Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer known for his plays, poems, and captivating storytelling. Learn about his family, education, marriage, and literary works.
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“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”Oscar Wilde
Oscar FingalO'Flahertie Wills Wildewas an Irish writer, poetand prominent aesthete. • After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. • Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the tragedy of his imprisonment and early death.
Brief information Birth date: October 16, 1854 Birth place: Dublin, Ireland Death date: November 30, 1900 Death place: Paris, France Burial: La Pére Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France Hair color: Brown Eye color: Grey High school: Portora Royal School College: Trinity College, Magdalen College Occupation: Playwright, novelist, poet, editor Parents: Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee Siblings: Henry, Emily, Mary, William, Isola Spouse: Constance Lloyd Children: Cyril and Vyvyan
Father William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland.
Mother Jane Wilde, under the pseudonym "Speranza" (the Italian word for 'Hope'), wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 and was a life-long Irish nationalist.
Sisters anda brother • Wilde had a brother – Henry Wilson, born in 1838 • Sisters – Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849
Education • At first Oscar Wilde was educated at home. • He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh.
Trinity College, Dublin • Wilde was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874. • Wilde quickly became an established. He established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, won a scholarship by competitive examination in his second, and then, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the University's highest academic award.
Magdalen College, Oxford • At Magdalen he read Greats from 1874 to 1878, and from there he applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected. • While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. • Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem “Ravenna”. In November 1878, he graduated with a rare double first in his B.A. of Classical Moderations and LiteraeHumaniores (Greats). • Wilde wrote to a friend, "The dons are 'astonied' beyond words – the Bad Boy doing so well in the end!"
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Debut in society • After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin. • He published lyrics and poems in magazines.In 1881, he published his first collection of poetry - 'Poems'. He worked as the art reviewer
America: 1882 • In 1882 Wilde travelled in the United States to deliver lectures. • He attracted attention of American press. The first lection"The English Renaissance of Art” was concluded with the words : " We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art. ".The audience was delighted. • The tour of America was a model of courage and grace, exactly like the self-promotion. Wilde lived in the U.S.A. for a year.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
London life and marriage • In London, he had been introduced to Constance Lloyd in 1881, daughter of Horace Lloyd, a wealthy Queen's Counsel. She happened to be visiting Dublin in 1884, when Wilde was lecturing at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her, and they married on the 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St. James Church in Paddington in London • The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).
Children Cyryl Vivian
Prose writing: 1886–91 • The next six years were to become the most creative period of Wilde’s 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 story and had it published in book form the following year.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
The tales by Oscar Wilde “The Happy Prince and Other Tales” “The House of Pomegranates” A collection of fairy tales, that was published as a second collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). Wilde once said that this collection was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public." The stories included in this collection are as follows: “The Young King” “The Birthday of the Infanta” “The Fisherman and his Soul” “The Star-Child” Sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Storiesis a collection of stories for children first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: "The Happy Prince“ "The Nightingale and the Rose“ "The Selfish Giant“ "The Devoted Friend“ "The Remarkable Rocket“ It is most famous for its title story, "The Happy Prince".
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” • The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. • Wilde later revised this edition, making several alterations, and adding new chapters; the amended version was published by Ward, Lock, and Company in April 1891.
The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfillment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian (whimsically) expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than he. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging. • The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered a work of classic gothic fiction with a strong Faustian theme.
Journalism and editorship: 1886–89 • Also Wilde engaged in journalism. • Wilde, having tired of journalism, had been busy setting out his aesthetic ideas more fully in a series of longer prose pieces which were published in the major literary-intellectual journals of the day.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Theatrical career: 1892–95 • 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 “Salome” (1891), “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.
Lady Windermere's Fan • Or A Play About a Good Woman first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage. • The play's Broadway première on 5 February 1893 at Palmer's Theatre was also the first Broadway performance for stage and screen actress Julia Arthur, who played Lady Windermere.
“A Woman of No Importance” • The play premièred on 19 April 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. It is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of dark comedy. It looks in particular at English upper class society and has been reproduced on stages in Europe and North America since his death in 1900.
“An Ideal Husband” • An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. The action is set in London, in "the present", and takes place over the course of twenty-four hours. "Sooner or later," Wilde notes, "we shall all have to pay for what we do." But he adds that, "No one should be entirely judged by their past."
“The Importance of Being Earnest” • A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations.
Salome • Salome (or in French: Salomé) is a tragedy. The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published. The play tells in one act the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the dance of the seven veils.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
De Profundis • Between January and March 1897 Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas. In reflective mode, Wilde coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful agent provocateur in Victorian society, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was of one who "stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age". • The first half concludes with Wilde's forgiving Douglas, for his own sake as much as Douglas'. The second half of the letter traces Wilde's spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment through his prison reading. He realised that his ordeal had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time. • “...I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world... And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.” • On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). De Profundis was partially published in 1905, its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962 in The Letters of Oscar Wilde.
“When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else – the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver – would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” De Profundis
Exile • Wilde was released on 19 May 1897. • He left England the next day for the continent, to spend his last three years in penniless exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth”. • Wilde spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”- a response to the agony he experienced in prison. He adopted the proletarian ballad form, and the author was credited as "C.3.3." • Wilde too was separated from his wife and sons. • He and Bosie reunited briefly, but Oscar mostly spent the last three years of his life wandering Europein France, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. Sadly, he was unable to rekindle his creative fires. • Wilde's final address was at the dingy Hôteld'Alsace (now known as L'Hôtel), in Paris.
Death • By 25 November Wilde had developed cerebral meningitis and was injected with morphine. • Robbie Ross arrived on 29 November and sent for a priest, and Wilde was conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church by Fr Cuthbert Dunne, a Passionistpriest. • Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on 30 November 1900. • Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, inside the city.His tomb was designed by Sir Jacob. • The epitaph is a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.
Presentation was prepared by Natalie Panyukovaform 8 A Moscow, 2012
