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Oscar Final O'Flahertie Wilde
was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin ireland to a succesful doctor, Sir William Wilde and his eccentric wife, a poet and
journalist, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (better known as Speranza). Wilde was the couple's second son (a dissappointment to
the mother although she ultimately grew to have a very close relationship with her fellow poet and son). In 1856, Wilde's
younger sister Isola was born and became a favorite with her brother. When she died at the age of ten from a fever, both Oscar
and his mother suffered terrible emotional losses, Wilde carried an evelope with a lock of his sister's hair with the inscription
"My Isola's Hair" until his death and wrote one of his most moving poems, Requiescat (found on the samples page of this website)
about these feelings of loss. Wilde was home-schooled for nine years, he left home shortly after his sister's death to truly
begin his studies.
Though a lazy student, Wilde's genius helped
make him a top student at every institution he attended. From nine to sixteen the institution was Portora Royal School, he
then went on to study classics (ancient Greek and Roman writings) at Trinity College from 1871-1874 in his home city,
Dublin where he won the top award in that category, the Berkeley Gold Medal. These achevements also secured Wilde a scholarship
to Magdalen College, Oxford which he attended between 1874 and 1878. At Oxford, Wilde began to establish his writing style
and idealogical beliefs; he joined the aesthetic movement and won the Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna which was the highest
award a poem could aspire to in Oxford. By the time of his graduation had won the respect (though not the affection) of his
professors (whose advice he often scorned due to his own inflated ego) and peers and was gaining popularity in all the circles
he moved in as a poet of great promise.
After Oxford, Wilde continued to write poetry
and fell in love for the first time with Florence Balcombe. The two were extremely intimate and Wilde thought they would be
married but upon his return from a short trip found that Florence had become engaged to Bram Stoker (yes, that Bram Stoker)
and heart-broken fled his birth country "never to return again" (a promise Wilde did not quite keep as he made brief visits
to Ireland twice in his life, but the seperation was still painful for Wilde who was quite the Irish Nationalist). Wilde moved
to London England where he lived with Frank Miles (suspected to have been his first male lover but the evidence does not supprt
this argument) and made his living by continuing to publish poetry and delivering lectures. Wilde's first published volume
was a collection of poems (insightfully entitled Poems) released to mixed reviews in 1881. Let down by the underwhelming
success of Poems and confronted by financial problems, Wilde met and married the moderately wealthy Constance Lloyd
within only a few months of acquaintance and Wilde was able to live of her income comfortably. They had two children extremely
early in the marriage, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). Oscar (for all his failings as a husband) was an extremely doting parent,
he wrote all his short stories to amuse his children and after his fall from grace (which you'll learn all about) it was the
loss of his children that Wilde most vocally mourned.
Since 1879, Wilde had been involving himself
with greater and greater determination with the Aesthetic movement and quickly became it's most prominent figure. Fans of
the movement began to trust Wilde to be their poster boy (which Wilde was more-than-happy to be); critics of the movement
(especially PUNCH magazine, a popular parody publication) began to personally attack Wilde in unflattering reviews
and cartoons. All this hype brought Wilde to his apex, the insults of critics only making the movement more popular it was
a satiric opera of Aestheticism, Patience, that specifically targetted Wilde that brought Wilde the oppurtunity
for the American Lecture Tour that made him so famous. During this tour, Wilde dressed even more foppish than he had in London
and carried Sunflowers, a chief symbol of the movement, everywhere he went. Upon his return, Wilde was a national celebrity.
He worked for news publications such as the Pall Mall Gazette and Woman's World whilst publishing his short story collections
and staging many of his first plays.
The success of "Lady Windemere's Fan" finally
made Wilde the darling playwright of English society. Within the next three years (1892-1895) Wilde put out four long-runing
plays and his first and only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray was attacked by many
for having homoerotic undertones, it was during this period of success that those undertones would finally be realized by
Wilde himself. It was during this time that Wilde met Robert Ross, already a fan of Wilde's poetry, Ross was shockingly unapologetic
about his sexuality having "come out" to his family before leaving for school and made no pretenses or apologies to society
despite the fact that homosexual acts were illegal at that time. Only 17-years-old at the time Wilde was in his thirties,
Ross was determined to sedce Wilde (and was successful). Although Wilde is known to have kissed men before (including
Walt Whitman!) Robert Ross made it a point of pride that he was "Oscar's first boy", a boast that he often threw at Lord Alfred
Douglas, for whom Ross (for obvious reasons of jealousy) had little love. Whatever his relationship with Ross, it was not
until he was introduced to the beautiful Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas that Wilde's sexuality began to be publicly questioned.
Bosie was the youngest son of the Marquess of Queensbury, a mad man who had been divorced by his wife for abuse and who got
delight in spending his fortune unwisely and torturing his family, especially his youngest son whose love of poetry was seen
as "idling". Wilde and Bosie's relationship was not a healthy one, Bosie was spoiled and selfish, Wilde was so devoted to
the boy that he endured Bosie's bad behavior with little complaint. Although Bosie did seem to have great regard for Wilde,
his only truly deep display of emotion throughout life was a passionate hatred of his father that would drive Wilde into ruin.
On February 18, 1895, the Marquess tried to
gain entry to a gentlemen's club at which Oscar and Bosie were dining to further insult both gentlemen. When he was refused
entry, Queensbury left a calling card which accused Wilde of being a sodomite (though the insult was misspelled as "Somdomite").
Wilde was publicly humiliated and Bosie, driven by hatred for his father, encouraged Wilde to sue his father for libel. Despite
the advice of many of his friends (including Ross who was a lifetime friend), Wilde was finally convinced to bring Queensberry
to court. Douglas was sure that with his testimony and the testimony of his family members, all of whom detested Queensbury
and were outraged by his harassment of Wilde, Wilde would easily win and his father would be imprisoned. Unfortunately, Douglas
knew little about the social system, because the case did not center on a family incident, none of them were liable to testify
and the effect of the trials would basically destroy Wilde's life.
The First Trial of Oscar Wilde's life was
the lawsuit he himself raised against the Marquess. The first day went incredibly successful, Wilde's wit and his amiable
personality made him a favourite in the court, he had a clever comeback to every questioned posed to him and was successful
in making attacks on his art form by the opposing side seem ridiculous. The First Trial ended with a split jury, half convinced
by Wilde that his art was in no way immoral, and half convinced by the opposing side that Wilde's writings made it all too
clear that the Marqueess was correct. The Second Trial, however, was fatal for Wilde. Queensberry brought in a young boy who
gave testimony that Wilde had paid him and given him gifts for physical favors, the lawsuit was thrown out and an arrest warrant
for "Gross Indecency" was issued for Wilde. Wilde's mistake in making a legal matter of what could have been a inconsequential
situation finally came home to him when Queensberry was able to prove that instead of libel his attacks had been founded in
truth. Aside from suggestive correspondence between Bosie and Wilde and attacks on subtext in his works, countless rent
boys were brought in to testify that Wilde had treated them in the same way.
Wilde was convicted on May 25, 1895
and sentenced to two years hard labor which he served at Reading Gaol. Oscar, always an emotional man, was deeply affected
by his public humiliation and by the fact that Bosie did not visit him in prison (Ross, on the other hand was a common visiter).
Other prisoners had a great amount of pity for him, he became known as The Poet in the prison and although he was no longer
his charming and humourous self he was well-like by prisoners and became extremely close to the warden. Although Wilde was
denied pen and paper when first he arrived at the prison, a change in wardens brought an almost illiterate man whom Wilde
tutored with newspapers (which gave him a way to keep up with the outside world that he was not supposed to be allowed).
The warden would send Wilde larger dinner portions and allowed Wilde a position in the prison library. After a few months
of this set-up, the warden gave Wilde pen and paper telling him that all he expected was for him to use it (and his tragic
experiences) to write something greater than he ever had before. Wilde used the paper to write an extremely long and
bitter letter to Bosie, now known as "De Profundis" one of his greatest works, and when released from prison, Wilde wrote
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, undisputed as his greatest work based on the true story of Charles Trooper Wooldridge an inmate
hung for killing his wife during Wilde's imprisonment. When the work was finally published, his first copy was autographed
with thanks to the warden who could now read it, thanks to Wilde.
During Wilde's imprisonment, Constance
decided to divorce Wilde but was convinced not to by Robbie Ross who appealed to her that Wilde's reputation could not take
the hit. Constance visited Wilde once in prison and then moved (with the two children) and changed her own and their last
name to Holland. Wilde never saw his wife or children again, even after her death the children were forbidden to see Wilde
by their new caretaker, an aunt of Constance's. Wilde lived more-or-less as a hermit for the rest of his life. He lived under
the name Sebastian Melmoth first in Paris where he could not escape gossip, then in the Netherlands where the population was
mostly accepting and he was not as infamous. The physical stresses of prison on Wilde who had an irregular frame and could
not shoulder hard labor and the emotional distress of his fall from grace, his seperation from his sons, and his betrayal
by the cowardly Bosie who blew Wilde off after his release, married soon after his death and spent the rest of his life blaming
Wilde for the entire affair claiming that Wilde had insisted on the physical aspects of the relationship, which he was never
interested in (a lie, Douglas was known to have been with many men before Wilde) broke Wilde's heart and left him mentally
unbalanced. After his great artistic triumph in "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", Wilde became prey to nightmares about death,
dying from this fatal mixture of maladies on November 30, 1900.
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