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OSCAR WILDE

Wilde, Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills (1854 – 1900) – Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, poet and wit was born in Dublin. His father was Sir William Wilde; his mother Lady Jane Francesca Wilde.

Wilde, Lady Jane Francesca, known as “Speranza” (1826-96) was an Irish poet and hostess, born in Dublin. An ardent nationalist, she contributed poetry and prose to the ‘Nation’ from 1845 under the pen-name of ‘Speranza’. In 1851 she married Sir William Wilde. Her salon was the most famous in Dublin. After her hus­band’s death she moved to London, and published several works on folklore, including ‘Ancient Legends of Ireland’ (1887) and ‘Ancient Cures’ (1891).

Wilde, Sir William Robert Wills (1815-76) – Irish oculist, aurist and topographer, born in Castlerea, County Roscommon, into an Irish Protestant family. He stud­ied in London, Berlin and Vienna, and on his return to Dublin became the leader of his medical specialization. He served as medical commissioner on the Irish Census (1841 and 1851), publishing a major medi­cal report, ‘The Epidemics of Ireland’ (1851). He wrote on ocular and aural surgery and made a valuable medical study, ‘The Clos­ing Years of Dean Swift’s Life’ (1849), with important evidence against the common belief that Swift had died insane. He pio­neered the operation for mastoiditis, in­vented an ophthalmoscope and founded St.Mark’s Ophthalmic Hospital. He was an antiquarian of significance, publishing a major catalogue of the holdings of the Royal Irish Academy, and was apparently fluent in Gaelic. He was named Queen Victoria’s Irish oculist in ordinary and also attended King Oskar I of Sweden.

From the age of nine to sixteen Oscar Wilde went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. He went on to Trinity Col­lege, Dublin, and to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was dandified, sexu­ally ambiguous, sympathetic towards the Pre-Raphaelites, and contemptuous of conventional morality. He was also an accomplished classicist, and won the Newdigate prize in 1878 for the poem ‘Ravenna’, which his biographer, Richard Ellmann, described as “a clever hodgepodge of per­sonal reminiscence, topographical descrip­tion, political and literary history”. In 1881 his first volume of poetry was published, ‘Patience’, and the next year he embarked on a lecture tour of the USA where when asked if he had anything to declare he re­plied, ‘Only my genius’. The tour, wrote Ellmann, “was an advertisement of cour­age and grace, along with ineptitude and self-advertisement”. Wilde boasted, ‘I have already civilized America’.

He married, in 1884, Constance Lloyd, and had two sons for whom he wrote the classic children’s fairy stories ‘The Happy Prince and Other Tales’ (1888). Two years later came ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, modelled on his presumed lover, the poet John Gray. More fairy stories appeared in 1891, ‘A House of Pomegranates’ and ‘Lord Savile’s Crime and Other Stories’. It was also the year of his second play, ‘The Duchess of Padua’, a verse tragedy. But over the next five years he built his dramatic reputation, first with ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ (1892), followed by ‘A Woman of No Importance’ (1893), ‘An Ideal Husband’ (1895) and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (1895). ‘Salome’, originally written in French, appeared in 1894 in a translation by Lord Alfred Douglas.



By now his homosexuality was com­monly known, and he was prosecuted and imprisoned. He was released in 1897 and went to France under the alias Sebastian Melmoth, the name of his favourite mar­tyr from ‘Melmoth the Wanderer’, the novel written by his great-uncle, Charles Maturin. ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ was pub­lished in 1898. His last years were spent wandering and idling on the continent.

Oscar Wilde’s maxims

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

The books that the world calls im­moral are the books that show the world its own shame.

There is no sin except stupidity.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.

All women become like their moth­ers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

Children begin by loving their par­ents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

To get into society, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.

Unit 4


Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1173


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