Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertic Wills (1856-1900)

Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertic Wills (1856-1900)

Irish-born English playwright, poet, and prose-writer, known for his eccentricity and affectation of behavior and the brilliant wit and paradox of his society comedies. During his undergraduate years at Oxford he became the leader of an English aesthetic movement, given impetus by the Preraphaelite Brotherhood and the theories of Walter Pater, which advocated "Art For Art's Sake" and sought to cultivate the hyperaesthetic characteristics of the contemporary Decadents in France. Wilde's works include Poems ( 1881); The Happy Prince, And Other Tales ( 1888), a collection of fairy tales and allegories; The Picture of Dorian Gray ( 1891), a novel in the form of a moral allegory; The House of Pomegranates ( 1892), another group of fairy stories; Intentions ( 1892), a collection of reviews and critical studies; Poems ( 1892); Lady Windermere's Fan ( 1892), A Woman of No Importance ( 1893), Salomé ( 1893), An Ideal Husband ( 1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest ( 1895), all plays; The Ballad of Reading Gaol ( 1898); and De Profundis ( 1905). The last two works were signed Sebastian Melmoth.

Wilde was the son of a well-known Irish surgeon and an eccentric poetess, Jane Francisca Elgee, who wrote under the name of Speranza. He attracted a deal of attention and ridicule during the period of his active aestheticism, when he wore his hair long, dressed eccentrically, and carried flowers in his hands while lecturing; the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience ( 1881) was a burlesque of the "art for art's sake" movement led by him. His plays were very successful and are considered by some critics to be in part forerunners of the similarly witty comedies of George Bernard Shaw. Wilde's career was wrecked when he brought a suit for libel against the Marquis of Queensberry, lost, and, as a result of evidence revealed at the trial, was sentenced to a prison term of two years at Reading Gaol on a charge of abnormal sexual vice. After his release from prison, he spent his last years in Paris in bitterness and despair.