ABOUT OSCAR wIlDE
"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854.
Oscar's father was a well-known surgeon, and his mother was a fiery journalist and poet. In 1871, he was awarded the Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin.
Oscar capped his Trinity achievements in 1874 by winning the college's Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek and being awarded a Demyship scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford.
Wilde moved to London after graduation to live with his friend Frank Miles, a popular high society portrait painter, where he mixed with elite London artists and performers such as James Whistler (painter), Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry (actresses), and Lily Langtry (actress and mistress of the Prince of Wales).
Wilde published his first collection of poetry in 1881. Critics gave "Poems" mixed reviews.
Wilde sailed for New York in December 1881, intending to travel across the United States and deliver a series of lectures on aesthetics.
In 1888, he published his first successful book, a collection of short stories for children (The Happy Prince and Other Stories). After seeing an early version of A Picture of Dorian Gray in a literary magazine, Lippincott's, he published it in 1891.
Between 1892 and 1895, he wrote a string of critically acclaimed comedies, all of which were hugely successful: Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Ernest.
Oscar married Constance Lloyd, who was four years his junior, on May 29, 1884, and the couple had two sons in quick succession, Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886.
He was known as a flamboyant, outspoken man. In 1887, he worked as editor of a magazine, Woman's World, dropping the society gossip column and including articles on female emancipation, women's colleges, and Shakespeare. He was homosexual at a time when it was illegal to be homosexual, and he was sentenced to two years in prison (with hard labour) for his 'crime' in 1895.
OSCAr WIlDE in prison
In the summer of 1891, Wilde met Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, the third son of the Marquis of Queensberry, and they became lovers until Wilde sued Bosie's father for libel after the Marquis accused him of sodomy. He later dropped his case, having committed himself to an underworld of boy prostitutes since writing 'Dorian Gray.' He was later arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term that meant homosexual acts that did not amount to buggery, and sentenced to two years hard labour. Constance moved the children to Switzerland and adopted an old family name, "Holland."
OSCAR wIlDE: The Later Years
He went to France after being released from prison and wandered Europe in failing health and without funds.
Under the pseudonym C33(his prisoner number), he wrote his most famous poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in 1898.
He died in Paris in 1900 of cerebral meningitis and is buried alongside the French literary elite in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.
