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He was born
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland. His complete name is Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. -
Oscar's early life.
Until he was nine, Oscar Wilde was educated at home, where a French bonne and a German governess taught him their languages. He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh from 1864 to 1871. Until his early twenties, Wilde summered at the villa, Moytura House, his father built in Cong, County Mayo. There the young Wilde and his brother Willie played with George Moore. -
University education.
As a student Wilde worked with Mahaffy on the latter's book Social Life in Greece. Wilde, despite later reservations, called Mahaffy "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who showed me how to love Greek things". For his part, Mahaffy boasted of having created Wilde; later, he named him "the only blot on my tutorship".While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. -
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University education.
He was studying in Magdalen University in Oxford. -
Marriage.
In London, he had been introduced in 1881 to Constance Lloyd, 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 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St James's Church, Paddington in London. -
Journalism and editorship.
He enjoyed reviewing and journalism; the form suited his style. He could organise and share his views on art, literature and life, yet in a format less tedious than lecturing. Buoyed up, his reviews were largely chatty and positive. Wilde, like his parents before him, also supported the cause of Irish Nationalism. When Charles Stewart Parnell was falsely accused of inciting murder Wilde wrote a series of astute columns defending him in the Daily Chronicle. -
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Journalism time.
He was journalist of one of the most popular journals at the moment. -
Shorter fiction.
Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and had been regularly writing fairy stories for magazines. In 1891 he published two more collections, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, and in September A House of Pomegranates was dedicated "To Constance Mary Wilde". -
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The story begins with a man painting a picture of Gray. When Gray, who has a "face like ivory and rose leaves", sees his finished portrait, he breaks down. Distraught that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful, he inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain in which only the painted image grows old while he stays beautiful and young. For Wilde, the purpose of art would be to guide life as if beauty alone were its object. -
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Theatrical career.
He created plays like Salomé, The importance on being Earnest, An ideal husband and A women of no importance. -
Comedies of society.
Wilde, who had first set out to irritate Victorian society with his dress and talking points, then outrage it with Dorian Gray, his novel of vice hidden beneath art, finally found a way to critique society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan was first performed on 20 February 1892 at St James's Theatre, packed with the cream of society. On the surface a witty comedy, there is subtle subversion underneath: "it concludes with collusive concealment rather than collective disclosure". -
Imprisonment and death.
First entered Newgate Prison in London for a week for processing, then was moved to Pentonville Prison, where the "hard labour" to which he had been sentenced consisted of many hours of walking a treadmill. He dead because of a meningitis.
