Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, the early 1890s saw him become one of the most popular playwrights in London. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts, imprisonment, and early death at age 46.

Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.

As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he 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 worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. 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). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote 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. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

***Cadabra Releases:***

The Canterville Ghost

***Bibliography:***

## Essays

* "The Decay of Lying" First published in *Nineteenth Century* (1889), republished in *Intentions* (1891).
* "Pen, Pencil and Poison" First published in the *Fortnightly Review* (1889), republished in *Intentions* (1891).
* "The Soul of Man under Socialism" First published in the *Fortnightly Review* (1891), republished in *The Soul of Man* (1895), privately printed. ("The Soul of Man Under Socialism" on Wikisource)
* *Intentions* (1891) Wilde revised his dialogues on aesthetic subjects for publication in this volume, which comprises:
	+ "The Critic as Artist"
	+ "The Decay of Lying"
	+ "Pen, Pencil and Poison"
	+ "The Truth of Masks"
* "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" first published in the Oxford student magazine *The Chameleon*, December 1894) ("Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" on Wikisource)
* "A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated" First published, anonymously, in the 1894 November 17 issue of Saturday Review.

## Fiction

### Novel

* *The Picture of Dorian Gray* (1890/1891). The first version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was published, in a form highly edited by the magazine, as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of *Lippincott's Monthly Magazine*. Wilde published the longer and revised version in book form in 1891, with an added preface.

### Stories

* "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889)
* *The Happy Prince and Other Tales* (1888, a collection of fairy tales) consisting of:
	+ "The Happy Prince"
	+ "The Selfish Giant"
	+ "The Nightingale and the Rose"
	+ "The Fisherman and His Soul"
	+ "The Devoted Friend"
	+ "The Birthday of the Infanta"
	+ "The Star-Child"
	+ "The Remarkable Rocket"
	+ "The Young King"
* *A House of Pomegranates* (1891, fairy tales)
* *Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories* (1891) Including "The Canterville Ghost" first published in periodical form in 1887.
* *Complete Short Fiction*. Penguin Classics, 2003. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Ian Small. Contains all works listed above plus *Poems in Prose* (1894) and one very short '*Elder-tree' (fragment).*

## Poems

* *Ravenna* (1878) Winner of the Newdigate Prize.
* *Poems* (1881) Wilde's collection of poetry and first publication.
* *The Sphinx* (1894)
* *Poems in Prose* (1894)
* *The Ballad of Reading Gaol* (1898)

## Plays

* *Vera; or, The Nihilists* (1880)
* *The Duchess of Padua* (1883)
* *Lady Windermere's Fan* (1892)
* *A Woman of No Importance* (1893)
* *Salomé* (French version) (1893, first performed in Paris 1896)
* *Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act: Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley* (1894)
* *An Ideal Husband* (1895) (text)
* *The Importance of Being Earnest* (1895) (text)
* *La Sainte Courtisane* and *A Florentine Tragedy* Fragmentary. First published 1908 in Methuen's *Collected Works*

(Dates are dates of first performance, which approximate better to the probable date of composition than dates of publication.)

* *The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays*. Penguin Classics, 2000. Edited with an Introduction, Commentaries and Notes by Richard Allen Cave. Contains all from above save the first two. *Salome* is in English. As an appendix there is one excised scene from *The Importance of Being Earnest*.

## Posthumous (Previously Unpublished)

* *De Profundis* (Written 1895-97, in Reading Gaol). Expurgated edition published 1905; suppressed portions 1913, expanded version in *The Letters of Oscar Wilde* (1962).
* *The Rise of Historical Criticism* (Written while at college) First published in 1905 (Sherwood Press, Hartford, CT) privately printed. Reprinted in *Miscellanies*, the last volume of the First Collected Edition (1908).
* *The First Collected Edition* (Methuen & Co., 14 volumes) appeared in 1908 and contained many previously unpublished works.
* *The Second Collected Edition* (Methuen & Co., 12 volumes) appeared in installments between 1909–11 and contained several other unpublished works.
* *The Letters of Oscar Wilde* (Written 1868-1900) Published in 1962. Republished as *The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde* (2000), with letters discovered since 1962, and new annotations by Merlin Holland.
* *The Women of Homer* (Written 1876, while at college). First published in *Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer* (2008) by The Oscar Wilde Society.
* *The Philosophy of Dress* First published in *The New-York Tribune* (1885), published for the first time in book form in *Oscar Wilde On Dress* (2013).

## Misattributed

* *Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal* (Paris, 1893) has been attributed to Wilde, but its authorship is unclear. One theory is that it was a combined effort by several of Wilde's friends, which he may have edited.
* *Constance* On September 14, 2011, Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland contested Wilde's claimed authorship of this play entitled *Constance*, scheduled to open that week in the King's Head Theatre. It was not, in fact, "Oscar Wilde's final play," as its producers were claiming. Holland said Wilde did sketch out the play's scenario in 1894, but "never wrote a word" of it, and that "it is dishonest to foist this on the public." The Artistic Director Adam Spreadbury-Maher of the King's Head Theatre and producer of *Constance* pointed out that Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, wrote in 1954, "a significant amount of the dialogue (of *Constance*) bears the authentic stamp of my father's hand". There is further proof that the developed scenario that *Constance* was reconstituted from was written by Wilde between 1897 and his death in 1900, rather than the 1894 George Alexander scenario which Merlin Holland quotes.