Biography on Oscar Wilde

Biography on Oscar Wilde

Born: October 16, 1854 Dublin, Ireland.

Wilde’s Education: Oscar was educated at home up to the age of nine. He attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh from 1864 to 1871. After leaving Portora, Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874. He was an outstanding student, and won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. He was granted a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he continued his studies from 1874 to 1878 and where he became a part of the Aesthetic movement, one of its tenets being to make an art of life. While at Magdalen, he won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, which he read out at Encaenia; he failed, though, to win the Chancellor's English Essay Prize for an essay that would be published posthumously as The Rise of Historical Criticism (1909). In November 1878, he graduated with a double first in classical moderations and literae humaniores, or
'greats'.

Married: After graduating from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met and fell in love with Florence Balcombe. In London, he met Constance Lloyd, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. She was visiting Dublin in 1884, when Oscar was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her and they married on May 29, 1884 in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 allowed the Wildes to live in relative luxury.

Children: The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). After Oscar's downfall, Constance took the surname Holland for herself and the boys. She died in 1898 following spinal surgery and was buried in Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy. Cyril was killed in France in World War I. Vyvyan survived the war and went on to become an author and translator. He published his memoirs in 1954.

Lovers: After graduating from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met and fell in love with Florence Balcombe. She in turn became engaged to Bram Stoker. On hearing of her engagement, Wilde wrote to her stating his intention to leave Ireland permanently. He left in 1878 and was to return to his native country only twice, for brief visits. In 1891, Wilde became intimate with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed "Bosie".

Crimes/Arrests: As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after being convicted of "gross indecency" — a euphemism for homosexual acts. On the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest Queensberry planned to insult Wilde with the delivery of a bouquet of vegetables. Wilde was tipped off, and Queensberry was barred from entering the theatre. On February 18, 1895, the Marquess left a calling card at one of Wilde's clubs, the Albemarle. On the back of the card he wrote "For Oscar Wilde posing as a Somdomite" (a misspelling of 'Sodomite'). Wilde brought suit against Lord Alfred Douglas's father, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, for sending him a slanderous note. However, it was Wilde who was forced to act defensively at the trial because sodomy was a crime in late Victorian England and this first trial led to two others (the latter two against Wilde). He was imprisoned first in Pentonville and then in Wandsworth prison in London, and finally 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 quite close to the prison.

Tragedies: Cyril (one of his sons) was killed in France in World War I.

Death of Wife: She died in 1898 following spinal surgery and was buried in Staglieno
Cemetery in Genoa, Italy.

Literary Works: In 1881 he published a selection of his poems, but these attracted admiration in only a limited circle. His most famous fairy tale, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, appeared in 1888, illustrated by Walter Crane and Jacob Hood. This volume was followed by a second collection of fairy tales, A House of Pomegranates (1892), which the author said was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public."
His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in 1891. Critics have often claimed that there existed parallels between Wilde's life and that of the book's protagonist, and it was used as evidence against him at his trial. Wilde contributed some feature articles to the art reviews, and in 1891 re-published four of them as a book called Intentions, upon which his reputation as a critic rests.
His fame as a dramatist began with the production of Lady Windermere's Fan in February 1892. This was written at the request of George Alexander, actor-manager of the St James's Theatre in London. Wilde described it as "one of those modern drawing-room plays with pink lampshades". It was immediately successful, the author making the enormous sum of 7,000 pounds from the original run. He wore a green carnation on opening night. In 1894, the Robert Hichens novel The Green Carnation, said to be based on the relationship of Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, was published. It would be one of the texts used against Wilde during his trials the following year.
Less successful in 1892 was the play Salomé, which was refused a licence for English performance by the Lord Chamberlain because it contained Biblical characters. Wilde was furious, even contemplating (he said) changing his nationality to become a French citizen. The play was published in English, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, in 1894. A French edition had appeared the year before.
His next play, a social satire and melodrama, was A Woman of No Importance, produced on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre in London by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It repeated the success of Lady Windermere's Fan, consolidating Wilde's reputation as the best writer of "comedy of manners" since Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
A slightly more serious note was again struck with An Ideal Husband, produced by Lewis Waller at the Haymarket Theatre on 3 January 1895. This contains a political melodrama — as opposed to the marital melodrama of the earlier comedies — running alongside the usual Wildean epigrams, social commentary, comedy, and romance. George Bernard Shaw's review said that "...Mr Wilde is to me our only serious playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors, with audience, with the whole theatre..."
Barely a month later, his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest appeared at the St James's Theatre. It caused a sensation. Years later, the actor Allen Aynesworth (playing 'Algy' opposite George Alexander's 'Jack') told Wilde's biographer Hesketh Pearson that "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than the first night of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'."
Unlike the three previous comedies, Earnest is free of any melodrama; it brought irony, satire and verbal wit to English drama. Yet follows an unusually clever plotline, where alter egos abound among false identities, mistaken identities and imaginative romantic liaisons. This 'comedy of manners' is a perfect example of Wilde's theory on Art: Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art. At least two versions of the play are in existence. Wilde originally wrote it in four acts, but George Alexander proposed to cut it down to three for the original production.
In between An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde wrote at least the scenario for a play concerning an adulterous affair. He never developed it, the Queensberry affair and his own trial intervening. Frank Harris eventually wrote a version called Mr and Mrs Daventry.
It has been suggested that in 1894, Wilde wrote another little-known play (in the form of a pantomime) for a friend of his, Chan Toon, which was called For Love of the King and also went under the name A Burmese Masque. It has never been widely circulated. One copy, held in the Leeds University Library's Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection, is marked: "This is a spurious work attributed to Wilde without authority by a Mrs. Chan Toon, who was sent to prison for stealing money from her landlady. A.J.A. Symons." (15, Handlist 148, Leeds handlists index)

His Death: Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and artistic circles. Wilde spent his last days in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris. Just a month before his death he is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go." Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900. On his deathbed he was received into the Roman Catholic church. Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Bibliography: http://www.bookyards.com/biography.html?author_id=1335&author_name=Wilde%2C%20Oscar