Her interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece and Rome in her home. Jane Wilde read the Young Irelanders' poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. She believed, mistakenly, that she was of Italian ancestry, and under the pseudonym 'Speranza' (the Italian word for 'hope'), she wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 she was a lifelong Irish nationalist. Jane Wilde was a niece (by marriage) of the novelist, playwright and clergyman Charles Maturin, who may have influenced her own literary career. Oscar was two years younger than his brother, William (Willie) Wilde.

Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College), the second of three children born to an Anglo-Irish couple: Jane, née Elgee, and Sir William Wilde. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.Įarly life The Wilde family home on Merrion Square On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with men. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.Īt the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. Wilde returned to the drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. 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 what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. He tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new 'English Renaissance in Art' and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. At university, he read Greats he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright.

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