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Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet and prominent aesthete. Born in Dublin, his parents were successful intellectuals, and from an early age he showed his intelligence, becoming bilingual in French and German, then an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. After university, Wilde moved around trying his hand a various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured extensively, and wrote journalism prolifically. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day. Though it was his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray - still widely read - that brought him more lasting recognition. He became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London with a series of hilarious social satires which continue to be performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. At the height of his fame and success, he suffered a dramatic downfall in a sensational series of trials. Wilde was imprisoned for two years' hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. In prison he wrote De Profundis, a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. After release from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry, never to return to Ireland or Britain. In France he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long, terse poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life, but no further creative work. He died in Paris a broken, penniless man. He was only forty-six years old.

Birth and early life

Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin - now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College, Dublin. He was the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Francesca Wilde. The other siblings were an older brother known as Willie and a sister named Isola.

His father's extramarital affairs produced three other children: Henry Wilson, born in 1838, and Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849 respectively. Emily and Mary died in a horrifying accident in 1871 when the dress of one caught fire; her sister rushed her out of the house and down the steps to roll her in the snow, but her dress also took fire, and both died.

Isola died aged eight of what appears to have been meningitis. Wilde's poem Requiescat is dedicated to her memory: "Tread lightly, she is near/ Under the snow... All my life's buried here/ Heap earth upon it..."

When William Wilde died in 1876, Henry Wilson supported the family until his own sudden death a year later.

Jane Wilde, under the pseudonym "Speranza" (Italian word for 'hope'), wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 and was a life-long Irish nationalist. William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services to medicine. He also wrote books about archaeology and 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 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, where Wilde's sister, Isola, was born the following year. Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon, her guests including Sheridan le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson.

Education

Dublin, Portora, & Dublin

Oscar Wilde was educated at home until he was nine, where he learned French and German. He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh, spending the summer months with his family in rural Wicklow, Waterford, Wexford and at his father's family home in Mayo. There Wilde played with the older George Moore.

Leaving Portora, Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother Willie Wilde. His tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, the leading Greek scholar at Trinity, interested him in Greek literature. Wilde later, though having reservations about Mahaffy, was generous with his praise calling him "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who interested me in Greek things". For his part Mahaffy first boasted of having created Wilde, only, later, he credit him as "the only blot on my tutorship". Wilde quickly established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, and won a Scholarship by competitive examination in his second, and then, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. 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 even presented a paper entitled "Aesthetic Morality".

Oxford

He was encouraged to compete for a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, which he won easily having already studied Greek for over nine years. He studied from 1874 to 1878 at Magdalen, and applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected. and became a part of the Aesthetic movement; one of its tenets was to make an art of life. He was rusticated for one term, having returned to college late from a trip to Greece with Prof. Mahaffy.

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. He also deeply considered converting to Catholicism, discussing the possibility with clergy several times. Ellman reports that Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX while visiting Rome. He eagerly read Cardinal Newman's books, though during a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commented he "would be awfully sorry to give [freemasonry] up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy". His tone became altogether 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 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. He 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 began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He dressed flamboyantly and entertained and spent lavishly. Lilies became a dominant symbol of Wilde, and his remark "Every day I find it harder and harder to live up to my blue china", quickly became famous, grasped as a slogan for the aesthetes and as the epitome of their terrible vacuousness by critics.

Legends persist that this behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms vandalised, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and aestheticism generally became a recognised pose. Wilde was frowned upon by some of his fellow students, who were suspicious of his poses, but respected in his own aesthetic circle.

Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. Though he did not meet Professor Pater personally until his third year, he was enthralled by Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which had been published during Wilde's final year in Dublin. 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 Ruskin who gave him a purpose for it. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aestheticism in Pater for him the importance of art lay in its potential for the betterment of society. He too admired beauty, but it must be allied to moral good. When Wilde eagerly attended his lecture series The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence, he learned about aesthetics as 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 was later to comment ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless".

While at Magdalen, Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read 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 to William Ward, "The dons are 'astonied' beyond words - the Bad Boy doing so well in the end!"

Apprenticeship of an aesthete

After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She, however, became engaged to Bram Stoker who was later the author of Dracula, and they married in 1878. Wilde was disappointed but stoic, writing her a gracious letter and remembering fondly the years they had spent together. He also stated his intention to leave Ireland "probably for good". This he did in 1878, and returned to his native country only twice, for brief visits.

Unsure of his next step, he wrote to various contacts looking for Classics positions at Oxbridge. It was a lean year, though Wilde did compete for the fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, which he did not take altogether seriously. His mother encouraged him to stand for Parliament, though he continued to try to use his classical learning. 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, though the essay was later published in "Miscellanies", the final section of a 1905 edition of Wilde's collected works. With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachelor in London.

At 26 years old, his first play Vera; or, The Nihilists had been circulated among some friends for comment, and Wilde's name was gaining currency on artistic matters. In the late spring and early summer of 1881 Wilde decided to issue a volume entitled Poems, he had previously published many shorter lyrics and poems in magazines, especially the Dublin University Magazine and Kottabos but he now wished to flesh out his poetic efforts. The book was generally well received, and sold out its first print run of 750 copies, prompting further print runs in 1882. Bound in a rich enamel cover, and printed on hand-made Dutch paper, Wilde was also to present many copies to the dignitaries and writers who would receive him over the next few years. The Oxford Union's librarian requested a presentation copy and Wilde complied. After a debate called by Oliver Elton, the book was condemned for alleged plagiarism in a tight vote. The Librarian, who had liked the book and wanted it for the library, and returned to Wilde with a note of apology.

Wilde's address in the 1881 British Census is given as 1 Tite Street, London. The head of the household is listed as Frank Miles, with whom Wilde shared rooms at this address. Wilde would spend the next six years in London and Paris, and in the United States where he travelled to deliver lectures.

To the New World and back

Aestheticism in general was caricatured in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience (1881). While Patience was a success in New York, it was not known how much the aesthetic movement had penetrated the rest of America. So producer Richard D'Oyly Carte invited Wilde for a lecture tour of North America. D'Oyly Carte felt this tour would "prime the pump" for the U.S. tour of Patience, making the ticket-buying public aware of one of the aesthetic movement's charming personalities. Duly arranged, Wilde arrived on 3 January 1882 aboard the SS Arizona. Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that "I have nothing to declare except my genius", although there is no contemporary evidence for the remark.

During his tour of the United States and Canada, Wilde was torn apart by no small number of critics—The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and aestheticism—but he was also surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado.

Publications such as the Springfield Republican 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. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral". Though Wilde was caricatured in the press, he was the toast of the town, feted in the most fashionable salons in every city he visited.

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 feted constantly: "We are dining on the Duchess tonight", Wilde would declare before taking him to a fancy restauant. In August that year he returned to New York for the production of Vera, his first play which he had written during his lecture tour. He reportedly entertained the other passengers with Ave Imperatrix!, A Poem On England, a fine poem about the rise and fall of empires. E.C Steadman, in Victorian Poets descrbites this "lyric to England" as "manly verse - a poetic and eloquent invocation"  He was again talk of the town, and the play was initially well received by the audience, though reviews were lukewarm at best and attendance fell sharply. 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 met Constance Lloyd in 1881, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. She was visiting Dublin in 1884, when Wilde was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre, (an 18 year old W. B. Yeats was also among the audience). He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St. James Church in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 was generous, 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. 16 Tite Street was renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).

Criticism in the Pall Mall Gazette provoked a letter in his defence, and soon Wilde was a contributor to that and other journals during the years 1885-1887. He enjoyed reviewing and journalism, a form that suited his style: he could organise and share his views on art, literature and life, yet it was less tedious than lecturing his reviews were largely chatty and positive.

Editorship: 1887-1889

With his youth nearly over, and a family to support, in mid 1887 Wilde became the editor of "The Lady's World" magazine, which he promptly renamed The Woman's World. During his editorship, Wilde raised the tone of the magazine, adding serious articles on parenting, culture and politics, while keeping the 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 used his wide artistic acquaintance to solicit good contributions, 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. His lack of interest showed in the magazine's declining quality and flagging sales. He increasingly sent instructions by letter, and as he began a new period of creative work his own column appeared less regularly. As he wrote less for his employer, he wrote more for himself. The Portrait of Mr. W.H. , which he had begun in 1887, was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Vol. CXLVI, No. 885, July 1889). It is a short story in which a 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 anonymous narrator is at first sceptical, then believing, finally flirtatious with the reader. By the end fact and fiction have melded together. In October 1889, at the end of the second volume, Wilde left The Woman's World. The magazine ceased to exist shortly afterwards.

Sexuality

Robert Ross had read Wilde's poems before they met, even been beaten for doing so, yet he was also unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality. By Richard Ellmann's account, Ross, "...so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde". Later, Ross boasted to Lord Alfred Douglas that he was his first homosexual experience and there seems to have been much jealousy between them. Soon, Wilde would have more homosexual encounters in local bars or brothels. In Wilde's words, the relations were akin to "feasting with panthers," and he revelled in the risk: "the danger was half the excitement."

In the early summer of 1891 poet Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. An intimate friendship immediately sprang up between Wilde and Douglas, but it was not initially sexual, nor did the sexual activity progress far when it did eventually take place. According to Douglas, speaking in his old age, for the first six months their relations remained on a purely intellectual and emotional level. Despite the fact that "from the second time he saw me, when he gave me a copy of Dorian Gray which I took with me to Oxford, he made overtures to me. It was not till I had known him for at least six months and after I had seen him over and over again and he had twice stayed with me in Oxford, that I gave in to him. I did with him and allowed him to do just what was done among boys at Winchester and Oxford ... Sodomy never took place between us, nor was it attempted or dreamed of. Wilde treated me as an older one does a younger one at school." After Wilde realised that Douglas only consented in order to please him, Wilde permanently ceased his physical attentions.

For a few years they travelled and consorted together regularly. If Wilde was relatively indiscreet, even flamboyant, in the way he acted, Lord Douglas was reckless in public. He and some Oxford friends began to discuss homosexual-law reform, "The Cause", and they founded an Oxford journal, The Chameleon, which lasted just a single issue.

Lord Alfred's first mentor had been his cosmopolitan grandfather, Alfred Montgomery. His older brother Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig possibly had an intimate association with the Prime Minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, which ended on Francis' death in an unexplained shooting accident. Lord Alfred's father John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals or, as he phrased it in a letter, "Snob Queers like Rosebery". As he had attempted to do with Rosebery, Queensberry confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred on several occasions, but each time Wilde was able to mollify him.

Divorced and spending wildly, Queensberry was known for his outspoken views and the boxing roughs who often accompanied him. He abhorred his younger son and plagued the boy with threats to cut him off if he did not stop idling his life away. Queensberry was determined to end his son's friendship with Wilde. Wilde was in full flow of rehearsal when Bosie returned from a diplomatic posting to Cairo, around the time Queensberry visited Wilde at his Tite Street home. He angrily pushed past Wilde's servant and entered the ground-floor study, shouting obscenities and asking Wilde about his divorce. Wilde became incensed, but calmly told his manservant that Queensberry was the most infamous brute in London, and that he was not to be shown into the house ever again.

On the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest Queensberry further planned to insult and socially embarrass Wilde by throwing a bouquet of turnips. Wilde was tipped off, and Queensberry was barred from entering the theatre. Wilde took legal advice against him, and wished to prosecute, but his friends refused to give evidence against the Marquess and hence the case was dropped. Wilde and Bosie left London for a holiday in Monte Carlo. While they were there, on 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albermarle, with a scrawled inscription accusing Wilde of being a "posing somdomite".

Decline: 1895-1900

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, and it wore particularly harshly on Wilde as a gentleman, though 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 Reading Prison, some 30 miles west of London. Wilde knew the town of Reading from happier times when boating on the Thames and also from visits to the Palmer family, including a tour of the famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory which was quite close to the prison. It was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him.

Now known as prisoner C. 3.3, (Block C, floor three, cell three) he was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books, and pen & paper Wilde requested, among others, The Holy Bible in French, Italian and German grammars, some Greek texts, Dante, En Route a new French novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans, St Augustine, Cardinal Newman and Pater's essays.

Between January and March 1897 Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send, but permitted to take with him upon release. In it he repuidates Lord Douglas for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity; he hadn't forgotten Douglas's remark, when he was ill, 'When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.'. He also felt redemption and fulfilment in his ordeal, realising that his hardship 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). Its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962, in The Letters of Oscar Wilde.

Exile

Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on 19 May 1897, he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile on the continent, cut off from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

Wilde spent the summer of 1897 with Robert Ross in in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, it was a commercial success and brought him a little money. The title page identified the author as "C.3.3." it was only after the sixth printing, that his name was added in parentheses, though many in literary circles had known Wilde to be the author.

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, but for financial and other reasons, they separated.

Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris, where he lived in poverty. He corrected and published his plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, but otherwise had lost the "intense joy that creation requires". 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. He is quoted as saying, just a month before his death, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go."

His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death, 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

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. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death.

On his deathbed Wilde was received into the Roman Catholic church and Robert Ross, in his letter to More Adey (dated 14 December 1900), states "He was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when I asked him whether he understood. He pressed our hands. I then sent in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found Father Cuthbert Dunne ... who came with me at once and administered Baptism and Extreme Unction. - Oscar could not take the Eucharist". Wilde had long maintained an interest in the Catholic Church having met with Pope Pius IX in 1877 and describing it as "for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do". During his time in prison Wilde had pored over the works of Saint Augustine, Dante and Cardinal Newman.

Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. 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.

The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals which were broken off by a visitor and subsequently kept as a paperweight by a succession of cemetery keepers; their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a forty-minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.