| name | Oscar Wilde |
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| birth date | October 16, 1854 |
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| birth place | Dublin, Ireland |
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| death date | November 30, 1900 |
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| death place | Paris, France |
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| occupation | Writer |
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| nationality | Irish |
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| relatives | Sir William Wilde, Jane, Lady Wilde |
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| spouse | Constance Lloyd (1859–1898) |
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| children | Cyril Holland, Vyvyan Holland |
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| alma mater | Trinity College, Dublin |
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| genre | Drama, short story, dialogue, journalism |
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| language | English, French |
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| movement | Aestheticism |
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| notableworks | ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' |
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| period | Victorian era |
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| influences | Plato, Aristotle, Greek literature, William Shakespeare, Théophile Gautier, French literature, Joris-Karl Huysmans, John Keats, Victor Hugo, Peter Kropotkin, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, James McNeill Whistler, John Pentland Mahaffy, Dante |
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| influenced | Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Paul Merton, James Morrow, Enchi Fumiko, Erico Verissimo, Irène Némirovsky, André Gide, Max Beerbohm, Stephen Fry, Lawrence Durrell, Camille Paglia, Dave Sim, Mateiu Caragiale, Tom Stoppard, Saki, Amanda Filipacchi, W. H. Pugmire, Ronald Firbank, Christopher Hitchens, Morrissey, Peter Doherty, Benjamin Tucker, Renzo Novatore |
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| signature | Oscar Wilde Signature.svg
}} |
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Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. 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 circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. He also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism, to which he would later convert on his deathbed. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote ''Salome'' (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde sued the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and imprisoned for two years, held to hard labour. In prison he wrote ''De Profundis'' (written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.
Early life
Oscar Wilde was born at 21
Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the
Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin) the second of three children born to Sir
William Wilde and
Jane Francesca Wilde, two years behind William ("Willie"). 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. She read the Young Irelanders' poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Lady Wilde's interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece and Rome in her home. 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. He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore. A renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the city's poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
In addition to his children with his wife, Sir William Wilde was the father of three children born out of wedlock before his marriage: Henry Wilson, born in 1838, and Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849, respectively, of different parentage to Henry. Sir William acknowledged paternity of his illegitimate children and provided for their education, but they were reared by his relatives rather than with his wife and legitimate children.
In 1855, the family moved to No. 1 Merrion Square, where Wilde's sister, Isola, was born in 1857. The Wildes' new home was larger and, with both his parents' sociality and success soon became a "unique medical and cultural milieu"; guests at their salon included Sheridan le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt, William Rowan Hamilton and Samuel Ferguson.
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. Until his early twenties, Wilde summered at the villa his father built in Moytura, County Mayo. There the young Wilde and his brother Willie played with George Moore.
Isola died aged nine of meningitis. Wilde's poem "Requiescat" is dedicated to her memory:
"Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow
Speak gently, she can hear
the daisies grow"
University education: 1870s
Trinity College, Dublin
Wilde left Portora with a royal scholarship to read classics at
Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother
Willie Wilde. Trinity, one of the leading classical schools, set him with scholars such as
R.Y. Tyrell, Arthur Palmer,
Edward Dowden and his tutor,
J.P. Mahaffy who inspired his interest in
Greek literature. 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 would name him "the only blot on my tutorship".
The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, discussing intellectual and artistic subjects such as Rosetti and Swinburne weekly. Wilde quickly became an established member – the members' suggestion book for 1874 contains two pages of banter (sportingly) mocking Wilde's emergent aestheticism. He presented a paper entitled "Aesthetic Morality". At Trinity, Wilde 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 in Greek. He was encouraged to compete for a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford – which he won easily, having already studied Greek for over nine years.
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.
Attracted by its dress, secrecy, and ritual, Wilde petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the "Sublime Degree of Master Mason". During a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commented he "would be awfully sorry to give it up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy". He was deeply considering converting to Catholicism, discussing the possibility with clergy several times. In 1877, Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome. He eagerly read Cardinal Newman's books, and became more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastian Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had received some high profile converts. Neither his father, who threatened to cut off his funds, nor Mahaffy thought much of the plan; but mostly Wilde, the supreme individualist, balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed. On the appointed day of his baptism, Father Bowden received a bunch of altar lilies instead. Wilde retained a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.
While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He wore his hair long, openly scorned "manly" sports though he occasionally boxed, The line quickly became famous, accepted as a slogan by aesthetes but used against them by critics who sensed in it a terrible vacuousness. Wilde was once physically attacked by a group of four fellow students, and dealt with them single-handedly, surprising critics. By his third year Wilde had truly begun to create himself and his myth, and saw his learning developing in much larger ways than merely the prescribed texts. This attitude resulted in him being rusticated for one term, when he nonchalantly returned to college late from a trip to Greece with Prof. Mahaffy.
Wilde did not meet Walter Pater until his third year, but had been enthralled by his ''Studies in the History of the Renaissance'', published during Wilde's final year in Trinity. Pater argued that man's sensibility to beauty should be refined above all else, and that each moment should be felt to its fullest extent. Years later in ''De Profundis'', Wilde called Pater's ''Studies...'' "that book that has had such a strange influence over my life". He learned tracts of the book by heart, and carried it with him on travels in later years. Pater gave Wilde his sense of almost flippant devotion to art, though it was John Ruskin who gave him a purpose for it. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aestheticism of Pater, arguing that the importance of art lies in its potential for the betterment of society. Ruskin admired beauty, but believed it must be allied with, and applied to, moral good. When Wilde eagerly attended Ruskin's lecture series ''The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence'', he learned about aesthetics as simply the non-mathematical elements of painting. Despite being given to neither early rising nor manual labour, Wilde volunteered for Ruskin's project to convert a swampy country lane into a smart road neatly edged with flowers.
Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna", which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read it at Encaenia. In November 1878, he graduated with a rare double first in his B.A. of Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores (Greats). Wilde wrote a friend, "The dons are '' beyond words – the Bad Boy doing so well in the end!"
Apprenticeship of an aesthete: 1880s
Debut in society
After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again
Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She, however, became engaged to
Bram Stoker and they married in 1878. Wilde was disappointed but stoic: he wrote to her, remembering "the two sweet years – the sweetest years of all my youth" they had spent together. He also stated his intention to "return to England, probably for good". This he did in 1878, only briefly visiting Ireland twice.
Unsure of his next step, he wrote to various acquaintances enquiring about Classics positions at Oxbridge. ''The Rise of Historical Criticism'' was his submission for the Chancellor's Essay prize of 1879, which, though no longer a student, he was still eligible to enter. Its subject, "Historical Criticism among the Ancients" seemed ready-made for Wilde – with both his skill in composition and ancient learning – but he struggled to find his voice with the long, flat, scholarly style. Unusually, no prize was awarded that year. With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachelor in London. The 1881 British Census listed Wilde as a boarder at 1 Tite Street, Chelsea, where Frank Miles, a society painter, was the head of the household. Wilde would spend the next six years in London and Paris, and in the United States where he travelled to deliver lectures.
He had been publishing lyrics and poems in magazines since his entering Trinity College, especially in ''Kottabos'' and the ''Dublin University Magazine''. In mid-1881, at 27 years old, ''Poems'' collected, revised and expanded his poetic efforts. The book was generally well received, and sold out its first print run of 750 copies, prompting further printings in 1882. Bound in a rich, enamel, parchment cover (embossed with gilt blossom) and printed on hand-made Dutch paper, Wilde would present many copies to the dignitaries and writers who received him over the next few years. The Oxford Union condemned the book for alleged plagiarism in a tight vote. The librarian, who had requested the book for the library, returned the presentation copy to Wilde with a note of apology. Richard Ellmann argues that Wilde's poem "Hélas!" was a sincere, though flamboyant, attempt to explain the dichotomies he saw in himself:
To drift with every passion till my soulIs a stringed lute on which all winds can play
Punch was less enthousiastic, "His name is Wilde, his poems are tame" was their verdict.
America: 1882
Aestheticism was sufficiently in vogue to be caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in ''Patience'' (1881). Richard D'Oyly Carte, an English Impressario, invited Wilde on a lecture tour of North America, simultaneously priming the pump for the U.S. tour of ''Patience'' and selling this most charming aesthete to the American public. Wilde arrived on 3 January 1882 aboard the SS ''Arizona'' and criss-crossed the country on a gruelling schedule, lecturing in a new town every few days. Originally planned to last four months, it was continued for over a year due to the commercial success. Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art onto daily life. This was a practical as well as philosophical project: in Oxford he had surrounded himself with blue china and lilies, now one of his lectures was on interior design. When asked to explain reports that he had paraded down Piccadilly in London carrying a lily, long hair flowing, Wilde replied, "It's not whether I did it or not that's important, but whether people believed I did it".
Wilde and aestheticism were both mercilessly caricatured and criticised in the press, ''Springfield Republican'', for instance, commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. T.W. Higginson, a cleric and abolitionist, wrote in "Unmanly Manhood" of his general concern that Wilde, "whose only distinction is that he has written a thin volume of very mediocre verse", would improperly influence the behaviour of men and women. Though his press reception was hostile, Wilde was well received in diverse settings across America; he drank whiskey with miners in Leadville, Colorado and was fêted at the most fashionable salons in every city he visited.
London life and marriage
His earnings, plus expected income from ''
The Duchess of Padua'', allowed him to move to Paris between February and mid-May 1883; there he met
Robert Sherard, whom he entertained constantly. "We are dining on the Duchess tonight", Wilde would declare before taking him to a fancy restaurant. In August he briefly returned to New York for the production of ''Vera'', his first play, after it was turned down in London. He reportedly entertained the other passengers with "
Ave Imperatrix!, A Poem On England", about the rise and fall of empires.
E.C. Stedman, in ''Victorian Poets'' describes this "lyric to England" as "manly verse – a poetic and eloquent invocation". Wilde's presence was again notable, the play was initially well received by the audience, but when the critics returned lukewarm reviews attendance fell sharply and the play closed a week after it had opened.
He was left to return to England and lecturing: ''Personal Impressions of America'', ''The Value of Art in Modern Life'', and ''Dress'' were among his topics.
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 (W. B. Yeats, then aged eighteen, was also among the audience). He proposed to her, and they married on the 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St. James Church in Paddington in London. Constance's annual allowance of £250 was generous for a young woman (it would be equivalent to about £}} in current value), but the Wildes' tastes were relatively luxurious and, after preaching to others for so long, their home was expected to set new standards of design. No. 16, Tite Street was duly renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). Wilde was the sole literary signatory of George Bernard Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886.
Robert Ross had read Wilde's poems before they met, and he was unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality, even to the extent of estranging himself from his family. A precocious seventeen year old, by Richard Ellmann's account, he was "...so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde". Wilde, who had long alluded to Greek love, and – though an adoring father – was put off by the carnality of his wife's second pregnancy, succumbed to Ross in Oxford in 1886.
Prose writing: 1886–91
Journalism and editorship: 1886–89
Criticism over artistic matters in the ''Pall Mall Gazette'' provoked a letter in self-defence, and soon Wilde was a contributor to that and other journals during the years 1885–87. 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''. He promptly renamed it ''The Woman's World'' and raised its tone, adding serious articles on parenting, culture, and politics, keeping discussions of fashion and arts. Two pieces of fiction were usually included, one to be read to children, the other for the ladies themselves. Wilde worked hard to solicit good contributions from his wide artistic acquaintance, including those of Lady Wilde and his wife Constance, while his own "Literary and Other Notes" were themselves popular and amusing. The initial vigour and excitement he brought to the job began to fade as administration, commuting and office life became tedious. At the same time as Wilde's interest lagged, the publishers became concerned anew about circulation: sales, at the relatively high price of one shilling, remained low. Increasingly sending instructions by letter, he began a new period of creative work and his own column appeared less regularly. In October 1889, Wilde had finally found his voice in prose and, at the end of the second volume, Wilde left ''The Woman's World''. The magazine outlasted him by one volume.
Shorter fiction
Wilde published ''The Happy Prince and Other Tales'' in 1888, and had been regularly writing fairy stories for magazines. In 1891 published two more collections, ''Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories'', and in September ''The House of Pomegranates'' was dedicated "To Constance Mary Wilde". "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", which Wilde had begun in 1887, was first published in ''
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine'' in July 1889. It is a short story, which reports a conversation, in which the theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of the boy actor "
Willie Hughes", is advanced, retracted, and then propounded again. The only evidence for this is two supposed puns within the sonnets themselves. The anonymous narrator is at first sceptical, then believing, finally flirtatious with the reader: he concludes that "there is really a great deal to be said of the Willie Hughes theory of Shakespeare's sonnets. By the end fact and fiction have melded together. "You must believe in Willie Hughes," Wilde told an acquaintance. "I almost do, myself".
Essays and dialogues
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. In January 1889, ''The Decay of Lying: A Dialogue'' appeared in ''
The Nineteenth Century'', and ''Pen, Pencil and Poison'', a satirical biography of
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, in the ''
Fortnightly Review'', edited by Wilde's friend
Frank Harris. Two of Wilde's four writings on aesthetics are dialogues, though Wilde had evolved professionally from lecturer to writer, he remained with an oral tradition of sorts. Having always excelled as a wit and raconteur, he often composed by assembling phrases, ''bons mots'' and witticisms into a longer, cohesive work.
Wilde was concerned about the effect of moralising on art, he believed in its redemptive, developmental powers: "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine." In his only political text, ''The Soul of Man Under Socialism'', he argued political conditions should establish this primacy, and concluded that the government most amenable to artists was none at all. Wilde envisions a society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity, effort which can instead be expended on artistic creation. George Orwell summarised, "In effect, the world will be populated by artists, each striving after perfection in the way that seems best to him."
This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, intellectual socialists who advocated using state apparatus to change social conditions, nor did it endear him to the monied classes whom he had previously entertained. Hesketh Pearson, introducing a collection of Wilde's essays in 1950, remarked how ''The Soul of Man Under Socialism'' had been an inspirational text for Tsarist revolutionaries in Russia but laments that in in the Stalinist era "it is doubtful whether there are any uninspected places in which it could now be hidden". For Pearson the biographer, the essays and dialogues exhibit every aspect of Wilde's genius and character: wit, romancer, talker, lecturer, humanist and scholar and concludes that"no other productions of his have as varied an appeal". 1891 turned out to be Wilde's ''annus mirabilis'', apart from his three collections he also produced his only novel.
''The Picture of Dorian Gray''
The first version of ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' was published as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of ''
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'', along with five others. 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, but the portrait stay beautiful, inadvertently making a
faustian bargain. For Wilde, the purpose of art would guide life if beauty alone were its object. Thus Gray's portrait allows him to escape the corporeal ravages of his hedonism, (and Miss Prism mistakes a baby for a book in ''The Importance of Being Earnest''), Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art onto daily life.
Reviewers immediately criticised the novel's decadence and homosexual allusion, one in the ''The Daily Chronicle'' for example, called it “unclean,” “poisonous,” and “heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.” Wilde vigorously responded, writing to the Editor of the ''Scots Observer'', he clarified his stance on ethics and aesthetics in art "If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its moral lesson." He nevertheless revised it extensively for book publication in 1891: six new chapters were added, some overt decadence passages and homo-eroticism excised, and a preface consisting of twenty two epigrams, such as "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. " was included. Contemporary reviewers and modern critics have postulated numerous possible sources of the story, a search Jershua McCormack argues is futile because Wilde "has tapped a root of Western folklore so deep and ubiquitous that the story has escaped its origins and returned to the oral tradition." Wilde claimed the plot was "an idea that is as old as the history of literature but to which I have given a new form". Modern critics have considered the novel to be technically mediocre: the conceit of the plot has guaranteed its fame, but the device is never pushed to its full.
Theatrical career: 1892–95
''Salome''
The 1891 census records the Wildes' residence at 16 Tite Street, where he lived with his wife Constance and sons. Wilde though, not content with being more well-known than ever in London, returned to Paris in October 1891, this time as a respected writer. He was received at the ''salons littéraires'', including the famous ''mardis'' of
Stéphane Mallarmé, a renowned
symbolist poet of the time. Wilde's two plays during the 1880s, ''
Vera; or, The Nihilists'' and ''
The Duchess of Padua'', had not met with much success. He had continued his interest in the theatre and now, after finding his voice in prose, his thoughts turned again to the dramatic form as the biblical iconography of
Salome filled his head. One evening, after discussing depicitions of Salome throughout history, he returned to his hotel to notice a blank copybook lying on the desk, and it occurred to him to write down what he had been saying. He wrote a new play, ''
Salome'', rapidly and in French.
A tragedy, it tells the story of Salome, the stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but mother's delight, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils. When Wilde returned to London just before Christmas the ''Paris Echo'', a newspaper, referred to him as "le great event" of the season. Rehearsals of the play, including Sarah Bernhardt, began but the play was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain, since it depicted biblical characters. ''Salome'' was published jointly in Paris and London in 1893, but was not performed until 1896 in Paris, during Wilde's later incarceration.
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 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". The audience, like Lady Windermere, are forced to soften harsh social codes in favour of a more nuanced view. The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely thrashed by conservative critics.
It was followed by ''A Woman of No Importance'' in 1893, another Victorian comedy: revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations. Wilde was commissioned to write two more plays and ''An Ideal Husband'', written in 1894, followed in January 1895.
Peter Raby said these essentially English plays were well-pitched, "Wilde, with one eye on the dramatic genius of Ibsen, and the other on the commercial competition in London's West End, targeted his audience with adroit precision".
Queensberry family
In mid-1891
Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to
Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. Known to his family and friends as "Bosie", he was a handsome and spoilt young man. An intimate friendship sprang up between Wilde and Douglas and by 1893 Wilde was infatuated with Douglas and they consorted together regularly in a tempestuous affair. If Wilde was relatively indiscreet, even flamboyant, in the way he acted, Douglas was reckless in public. Wilde, who was earning up to £100 a week from his plays (his salary at ''The Woman's World'' had been £6), indulged Douglas's every whim: material, artistic or sexual.
Douglas soon dragged Wilde into the Victorian underground of gay prostitution and Wilde was introduced to a series of young, working class, male prostitutes from 1892 onwards by Alfred Taylor. These infrequent rendez-vous usually took the same form: Wilde would meet the boy, offer him gifts, dine him privately and then take him to a hotel room. Unlike Wilde's idealised, pederastic relations with John Gray, Ross, and Douglas, all of whom remained part of his aesthetic circle, these consorts were uneducated and knew nothing of literature. Soon his public and private lives had become sharply divided; in ''De Profundis'' he wrote to Douglas that "It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement… I did not know that when they were to strike at me it was to be at another's piping and at another's pay."
Douglas and some Oxford friends founded an Oxford journal, ''The Chameleon'', to which Wilde "sent a page of paradoxes originally destined for the ''Saturday Review''". "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" was to come under attack six months later at Wilde's trial, where he was forced to defend the magazine to which he had sent his work. In any case, it became unique: ''The Chameleon'' was not published again.
Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was known for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the modern rules of boxing. Queensberry, who feuded regularly with his son, confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred about the nature of their relationship several times, but Wilde was able to mollify him. In June 1894, he called on Wilde at 16 Tite Street, without an appointment, and clarified his stance:
"I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you" to which Wilde responded: "I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight". His account in ''De Profundis'' was less triumphant: "It was when, in my library at Tite Street, waving his small hands in the air in epileptic fury, your father… stood uttering every foul word his foul mind could think of, and screaming the loathsome threats he afterwords with such cunning carried out". Queensberry only described the scene once, saying Wilde had "shown him the white feather", meaning he had acted in a cowardly way. Though trying to remain calm, Wilde saw that he was becoming ensnared in a brutal family quarrel. He did not wish to bear Queensberry's insults, but he knew to confront him could lead to disaster were his liaisons disclosed publicly.
''The Importance of Being Earnest''
Wilde's final play again returns to the theme of switched identities: the play's two protagonists engage in "bunburying" (the maintenance of alternate personas in the town and country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores. ''Earnest'' is even lighter in tone than Wilde's earlier comedies. While their characters often rose to serious themes in moments of crisis, ''Earnest'' lacks the by-now stock Wildean characters: there is no "woman with a past", the protagonists are neither villainous or cunning, simply idle cultivés, and the idealistic young women are not that innocent. Although mostly set in drawing rooms and almost completely lacking in action or violence, ''Earnest'' lacks the self-conscious decadence found in ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' and ''Salome''.
The play, now considered Wilde's masterpiece, was rapidly written in Wilde's artistic maturity in late 1894. It was first performed on 14 February 1895, at St James's Theatre in London, Wilde's second collaboration with George Alexander, the actor-manager. Both author and producer assiduously revised, prepared and rehearsed every line, scene and setting in the months before the premiere, creating a carefully constructed representation of late-Victorian society, yet simultaneously mocking it. During rehearsal Alexander requested that Wilde shorten the play from four acts to three, which the author did. Premieres at St. James's seemed like "brilliant parties", and the opening of ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' was no exception. Allan Aynesworth (who played Algy) recalled to Hesketh Pearson, "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night." ''Earnest's'' immediate reception as Wilde's best work to-date finally crystallised his fame into a solid artistic reputation. Save for the dramas of his fellow Irishman George Bernard Shaw, Wilde's work is the only theatre of this period that is regularly revived today, and ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' remains his most popular play.
Wilde's professional success was mirrored by an escalation in his feud with Queensberry. Queensberry had planned to publicly insult Wilde by throwing a bouquet of rotting vegetables onto the stage; Wilde was tipped off and had Queensberry barred from entering the theatre. Fifteen weeks later Wilde would be in prison.
Trials
''Wilde vs Queensberry''
On 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the
Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing
somdomite". Wilde, egged on by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a
private prosecution against Queensberry, who was arrested on a charge of
criminal libel: as
sodomy was then a crime, Queensberry's note amounted to a public accusation that Wilde had committed a
felony. Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was in fact true.
The libel trial became a ''cause célèbre'' as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Taylor and Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of private detectives had directed Queensberry's lawyers, led by Edward Carson QC, to the world of the Victorian underground. Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, cross-dressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses, since they too were accomplices to the crimes Wilde was accused of.
The trial opened on 3 April 1895 amongst scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. The extent of the evidence massed against Wilde forced him to declare meekly, "I am the prosecutor in this case". Wilde's lawyer, Sir Edward George Clarke, opened the case by pre-emptively asking Wilde about two suggestive letters Wilde had written to Douglas, which the defence had in its possession. He characterised the first as a "prose sonnet" and admitted that the "poetical language" might seem strange to the court but claimed its intent was innocent. Wilde stated that the letters had been obtained by blackmailers who had attempted to extort money from him, but he had refused, suggesting they should take the £60 offered, "unusual for a prose piece of that length". He claimed to regard the letters as works of art rather than as something to be ashamed of.
Carson cross-examined Wilde on how he perceived the moral content of his works. Wilde replied with characteristic wit and flippancy, claiming that works of art are not capable of being moral or immoral but only well or poorly made, and that only "brutes and illiterates," whose views on art "are incalculably stupid", would make such judgements about art. Carson, a leading barrister at the time, diverged from the normal practice of asking closed questions. Carson pressed Wilde on each topic from every angle, squeezing out nuances of meaning from Wilde's answers, removing them from their aesthetic context and portraying Wilde as evasive and decadent. While Wilde won the most laughs from the court, Carson scored the most legal points. To undermine Wilde's credibility, and to justify Queensberry's description of Wilde as a "posing…somdomite", Carson drew from the witness an admission of his capacity for "posing", by demonstrating that he had lied about his age on oath. Playing on this, he returned to the topic throughout his cross-examination.
Carson then moved to the factual evidence and questioned Wilde about his acquaintances with younger, lower-class men. Wilde admitted being on a first-name basis and lavishing gifts upon them, but insisted that nothing untoward had occurred and that the men were merely good friends of his. Carson repeatedly pointed out the unusual nature of these relationships and insinuated that the men were prostitutes. Wilde replied that he did not believe in social barriers, and simply enjoyed the society of young men. Then Carson asked Wilde directly whether he had ever kissed a certain servant boy, Wilde responded, "Oh, dear no. He was a particularly plain boy – unfortunately ugly – I pitied him for it." Carson pressed him on the answer, repeatedly asking why the boy's ugliness was relevant. Wilde hesitated, then for the first time became flustered: "You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously." Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defence, which left Wilde bankrupt.
''The Crown vs Wilde''
After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of
sodomy and
gross indecency.
Robbie Ross found Wilde at the
Cadogan Hotel,
Knightsbridge with
Reginald Turner; both men advised Wilde to go at once to
Dover and try to get a boat to France; his mother advised him to stay and fight like a man. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late." Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the
Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term meaning homosexual acts not amounting to
buggery (an offence under a separate statute). At Wilde's instruction, Ross and Wilde's butler forced their way into the bedroom and library of 16 Tite Street, packing some personal effects, manuscripts, and letters. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at
Holloway where he received daily visits from Douglas.
Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895. Wilde pleaded not guilty. He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to take the stand; however he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Fearing persecution, Ross and many other gentlemen also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination Wilde was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently:
Charles Gill (prosecuting): ''What is "the love that dare not speak its name?''"
Wilde: "''The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it''."
This response was, however, counter-productive in a legal sense as it only served to reinforce the charges of homosexual behaviour.
The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, was finally able to agree bail. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 bail, having disagreed with Wilde's treatment by the press and the courts. Wilde was freed from Holloway and, shunning attention, went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of his firm friends. Edward Carson approached Frank Lockwood QC, the Solicitor General and asked "Can we not let up on the fellow now?" Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicised to be dropped.
The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge described the sentence, the maximum allowed, as "totally inadequate for a case such as this," and that the case was "the worst case I have ever tried". Wilde's response "And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?" was drowned out in cries of "Shame" in the courtroom.
Imprisonment
Wilde was imprisoned first in Pentonville and then Wandsworth prisons in London. The regime at the time was tough; "hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed" was the guiding philosophy. It wore particularly harshly on Wilde as a gentleman and his status provided him no special privileges. In November he was forced to attend Chapel, and there he was so weak from illness and hunger that he collapsed, bursting his right ear drum, an injury that would later contribute to his death. He spent two months in the infirmary.
Richard B. Haldane, the Liberal MP and reformer, visited him and had him transferred in November to HM's Prison, Reading, 30 miles west of London. The transfer itself was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him on the platform. Now known as prisoner C. 3.3 he was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books and writing materials. Wilde requested, among others: the Bible in French, Italian and German grammars, some Ancient Greek texts, Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', ''En Route'', Joris-Karl Huysmans's new French novel about Christian redemption; and essays by St Augustine, Cardinal Newman and Walter Pater.
Between January and March 1897 Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send, but was permitted to take with him upon release. 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". It was from these heights that his life with Douglas began, and Wilde examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Douglas's remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting." Wilde blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Douglas to bring about on him and took responsibility for his own fall, "I am here for having tried to put your father in prison."
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''.
Decline: 1897–1900
Exile
Wilde was released on 19 May 1897, and though his health had suffered greatly, he had a feeling of spiritual renewal. He immediately wrote to the
Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions. He left England the next day for the continent, to spend his last three years in penniless exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after
Saint Sebastian, and the titular character of ''
Melmoth the Wanderer''; a
gothic novel by
Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle. Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the ''
Daily Chronicle'', describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating
penal reform. His discussion of the dismissal of Warder Martin, for giving biscuits to an anaemic child prisoner, repeated the themes of the corruption and degeneration of punishment that he had earlier outlined in ''
The Soul of Man Under Socialism''.
Wilde spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol''. The poem narrates the execution of a man who murdered his wife for her infidelity; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them, but rather the poem highlights the brutalisation of the punishment that all convicts share. Wilde juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves". Wilde too was separated from his wife and sons. He adopted the proletarian ballad form, and the author was credited as "C.3.3." He suggested it be published in ''Reynold's Magazine'', "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes – to which I now belong – for once I will be read by my peers – a new experience for me". It was a commercial success, going through seven editions in less than two years, only after which "[Oscar Wilde]" was added to the title page, though many in literary circles had known Wilde to be the author. It brought him a little money.
Although Douglas had been the cause of his misfortunes, he and Wilde were reunited in August 1897 at Rouen. This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men. Constance Wilde was already refusing to meet Wilde or allow him to see their sons, though she kept him supplied with money. During the latter part of 1897, Wilde and Douglas lived together near Naples for a few months until they were separated by their respective families under the threat of a cutting-off of funds.
Wilde's final address was at the dingy Hôtel d'Alsace (now known as L'Hôtel), in Paris; "This poverty really breaks one's heart: it is so ''sale'', so utterly depressing, so hopeless. Pray do what you can" he wrote to his publisher. He corrected and published ''An Ideal Husband'' and ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', the proofs of which Ellmann argues show a man "very much in command of himself and of the play" but he refused to write anything else "I can write, but have lost the joy of writing". He spent much time wandering the Boulevards alone, and spent what little money he had on alcohol. A series of embarrassing encounters with English visitors, or Frenchmen he had known in better days, further damaged his spirit. Soon Wilde was sufficiently confined to his hotel to remark, on one of his final trips outside, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go." On 12 October 1900 he sent a telegram to Ross: "Terribly weak. Please come." His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure", Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party." Turner was one of the very few of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at his bedside when he died.
Death
By 25 November Wilde had developed cerebral
meningitis and was injected with morphine, his mind wandering during those periods when he regained consciousness. 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
Passionist priest from Dublin (the sacrament being conditional because of the doctrine that one may only be baptised once – Wilde having a recollection of Catholic baptism as child, a fact later attested to by the minister of the sacrament, Fr Lawrence Fox). Fr Dunne recorded the baptism:
As the ''voiture'' rolled through the dark streets that wintry night, the sad story of Oscar Wilde was in part repeated to me....Robert Ross knelt by the bedside, assisting me as best he could while I administered conditional baptism, and afterwards answering the responses while I gave Extreme Unction to the prostrate man and recited the prayers for the dying. As the man was in a semi-comatose condition, I did not venture to administer the Holy Viaticum; still I must add that he could be roused and was roused from this state in my presence. When roused, he gave signs of being inwardly conscious… Indeed I was fully satisfied that he understood me when told that I was about to receive him into the Catholic Church and gave him the Last Sacraments… And when I repeated close to his ear the Holy Names, the Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope and Charity, with acts of humble resignation to the Will of God, he tried all through to say the words after me.
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the meningitis: Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (''une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années'') and did not allude to syphilis.
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 Epstein, commissioned by Robert Ross, who asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes which were duly transferred in 1950. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitalia which have since been vandalised; their current whereabouts are unknown. In 2000, Leon Johnson, a multimedia artist, installed a silver prosthesis to replace them.
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.
Biographies
Wilde's life continues to fascinate and he has been the subject of numerous biographies since his death. The earliest were memoirs by those known to him: often they are personal or impressionistic accounts which can be good character sketches, but factually unreliable. Frank Harris, his friend and editor, wrote a biography, ''Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions'' (1916), though prone to exaggeration and sometimes factually inaccurate, it offers a good literary portrait of Wilde. Lord Alfred Douglas wrote two books about his relationship with Wilde: ''Oscar Wilde and Myself'' (1914), largely ghost-written by T.W.H. Crosland, vindictively reacted to Douglas's discovery that ''De Profundis'' was addressed to him and defensively tried to distance him from Wilde's scandalous reputation. Both authors later regretted their work. Later, in ''Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up'' (1939) and his ''Autobiography'' he was more sympathetic to Wilde. Of Wilde's other close friends, Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, his literary executor; and Charles Ricketts variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence. The first more or less objective biography of Wilde came about when Hesketh Pearson wrote ''Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit'' (1946). In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir ''Son of Oscar Wilde'', which recounts the difficulties Wilde's wife and children faced after his imprisonment. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989.
Wilde's life was still waiting for independent, true scholarship when Richard Ellmann began researching his 1987 biography ''Oscar Wilde'', for which he posthumously won a National (USA) Book Critics Circle Award in 1988 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. The book was the basis for the 1997 film ''Wilde'', directed by Brian Gilbert.
Neil McKenna's 2003 biography, ''The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde,'' offers an exploration of Wilde's sexuality. Often speculative in nature, it was widely criticised for its lack of scholarly rigour and pure conjecture. Thomas Wright's ''Oscar's Books'' (2008) explores Wilde's reading from his childhood in Dublin to his death in Paris. After tracking down many books that once belonged to Wilde's Tite Street library (dispersed at the time of his trials), Wright was the first to examine Wilde's marginalia.
Wilde's charm also had a lasting effect on the Parisian literati, who have produced a number of original biographies and monographs on him. André Gide, on whom Wilde had such a strange effect, wrote, ''In Memoriam, Oscar Wilde''; Wilde also features in his journals. Thomas Louis, who had earlier translated books on Wilde into French, produced his own ''L’esprit d’Oscar Wilde'' in 1920. Modern books include Philippe Jullian's ''Oscar Wilde'', and ''L'affaire Oscar Wilde ou Du danger de laisser la justice mettre le nez dans nos draps'' (''The Oscar Wilde Affair, or, On the Danger of Allowing Justice to put its Nose in our Sheets'') by Odon Vallet, a French religious historian.
Selected works
''Poems'' (1881)
''The Happy Prince and Other Stories'' (1888, fairy stories)
''Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories'' (1891, stories)
''House of Pomegranates'' (1891, fairy stories)
''Intentions'' (1891, essays and dialogues on aesthetics)
''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' (first published in ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'' July 1890, in book form in 1891; novel)
''The Soul of Man under Socialism'' (1891, political essay)
''Lady Windermere's Fan'' (1892, play)
''A Woman of No Importance'' (1893, play)
''An Ideal Husband'' (performed 1895, published 1898; play)
''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (performed 1895, published 1898; play)
''De Profundis'' (written 1897, published variously 1905, 1908, 1949, 1962; epistle)
''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' (1898, poem)
Notes
Footnotes
Citations
References
Further reading
Reconstructed transcripts from Wilde's three trials, with a foreword by
Sir John Mortimer QC and an introduction by
Merlin Holland.
External links
; Historical societies
The Oscar Wilde Society (UK)
Oscar Wilde Society (U.S.) Contains a reconstructed itinerary of Wilde's lecture tour in the United States
Société Oscar Wilde en France Publishes a journal on THE OSCHOLARS website – a massive and ever growing site on Wilde and his contemporaries at www.oscholars.com
; Historical notes
Record of Wilde's indictment and conviction – official Old Bailey website.
Details including court transcriptions of the trials of Wilde
; Radio programmes
; Online texts by Wilde
Wilde texts from University College Cork, electronic texts, including a selection of his journalism
''The Oscar Wilde Collection'' – text of Wilde's poetry, plays and fiction
Online books by Oscar Wilde
; Images
Historical Image of Ruskin Street; Oscar Wilde was encouraged to carry out road improvements in this Oxfordshire village by the art critic John Ruskin
Category:1854 births
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