Oscar Wilde

[[File:Oscar Wilde portrait.jpg|right|thumb|175px|Oscar Wilde in 1882]]
'''Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde''' {{lived|16 October 1854|30 November 1900}} was an [[Ireland|Irish]] [[Author|writer]] who wrote in English and French. His works include one novel (''The Picture of Dorian Gray'') and numerous plays, poems and short stories for adults and children. He became renowned in [[London]] as a wit. 

==Personality==
A hedonistic dandy, Wilde liked to posture as a member of the idle rich but in fact was very hard-working, as shown by the fact that he had his first and only novel ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' published within the same year that two of his plays (''Lady Windermere's Fan'' and ''The Importance of Being Earnest'') were performed in the West End. Wilde was a [[Tobacco smoking|chain-smoker]] and gave a speech after the premier of ''Lady Windermere's Fan'' with a cigarette in his hand, which shocked the audience only slightly less than his egoistic speech:

{{quotebox|Ladies and gentlemen, the actors have given us a charming rendition of a delightful play and your appreciation has been most intelligent. I congratulate you upon the great success of your performance which persuades me that you think almost as highly of this play as I do myself.<ref>''[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8Znrg3gr39EC&lpg=PA69&ots=X4OHnPj8Ge&dq=you%20think%20almost%20as%20highly%20of%20this%20play%20as%20I%20do%20myself&pg=PA69#v=onepage&q=you%20think%20almost%20as%20highly%20of%20this%20play%20as%20I%20do%20myself&f=false Wilde]'', Jonathan Fryer, Haus Publishing, 2005, p69</ref>}}

==Personal life==
Wilde was [[bisexual]] and is known to have enjoyed [[gay sex|sex with men]], despite being married with two sons and having been in love with a woman at Trinity College. After becoming infatuated with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, he began frequenting rent boys. Wilde's relationship with Bosie drew the ire of Bosie's father, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensbury, a prize-fighter (wrote the rule book) and virulent [[homophobia|homophobe]] with a reputation for violence throughout London. After the death of his eldest son, Douglas, despite being a self-proclaimed [[atheism|atheist]], viewed his son's death as a judgement upon his younger son, Bosie, and wrote an abusive message to Wilde, calling him a "[[:File:Somdomite.jpg|Posing Somdomite]]" (''[[sodomite]]'': he wasn't very well read). Wilde prosecuted Douglas for libel, leading to a court case in which Wilde's book ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' was brought forward in evidence due to homosexual subtext between the characters of Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton and Alan Campbell.

[[File:Oscar Wilde et Alfred Douglas.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Lord Alfred Douglas (left) and Oscar Wilde (right) in 1894]]

In 1895, Wilde was convicted of 'gross indecency' with other men (a [[euphemism]] for [[homosexuality]]) and imprisoned for two years, most of which he spent in Reading Jail. It was after this imprisonment that he wrote ''The Ballad  of Reading Gaol'' and the apologetic ''De Profundis'', [[Latin]] for "From the Depths". After Wilde's incarceration, Bosie Douglas distanced himself from him and claimed to have been "corrupted" by him, even being self-righteous enough to write a denunciation of Wilde, piously entitled ''In Excelsis'' ("In the Highest"). Bosie was also suspected of being an [[antisemitism|antisemite]]. Nevertheless, soon after Wilde's release, the two of them reconciled and lived together in Paris with Wilde adopting the pseudonym "Sebastian Melmoth" (a reference to a gothic novel of which Wilde was fond) to protect himself from homophobic attacks. Wilde lived in poverty in Paris and claimed "Like dear Saint Francis of Assissi, I am wedded to poverty however in my case, the marriage is not a success."

Wilde was diagnosed with cerebral meningitis on 25 November 1900. Before his death, he drank a glass of champagne with his friend and former lover Robbie Ross, claiming, "I am dying as I have lived: beyond my means." After waking from a nightmare, he told Robbie, "I dreamt I was dining with the dead" prompting Robbie to respond "Oscar, I'm sure you were the life and soul of the party." Wilde died on 30 November 1900. His last words are reputed to have been "This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death &mdash; eventually one of us has to go." The wallpaper won.

Wilde was originally buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris, but he was moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1909. The epitaph on the tomb is taken from Wilde's poem ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'':

:And alien tears will fill for him,
:Pity’s long-broken urn,
:For his mourners will be outcast men,
:And outcasts always mourn.

Ex-pat American sculptor Jacob Epstein carved one of the world's greatest funerary monuments, placed in one of the world's best known cemeteries, Paris' Pere-Lachaise, "The Tomb of Oscar Wilde". The controversy surrounding this work of art did justice to Mr. Wilde.

==Religion and politics==
[[File:Plate 2 of The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888).png|right|thumb|200px|1888 illustration by Walter Crane for Wilde's children's story "The Selfish Giant". That's little [[Jesus]] up the tree.]]

Wilde was raised as a [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] by his mother, Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde, and considered himself a Roman Catholic throughout his life, although he was only [[baptism|baptised]] on his deathbed. Despite being a self-proclaimed individualist, Wilde wrote in favour of [[socialism]],<ref name=soulsocialism>[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/ "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"], Oscar Wilde, 1891</ref> although it is often suggested he was a (left-wing) [[anarchist]].<ref>[http://newpol.org/content/soul-man-under-anarchism "The Soul of Man Under… Anarchism?"], Kristian Williams, NewPolitics, Winter 2011, Vol:XIII-2</ref> Certainly, he celebrated individualism as well as socialism, saying "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."<ref name=soulsocialism/>

He was also sympathetic to Irish [[nationalism]] and has become celebrated as a nationalist hero, despite the contradiction between Irish Catholicism and homosexuality.<ref>[http://www.jstor.org/stable/41757549 A Wilde Irish Rebel: Queerness versus nationalism in Irish imaginative presentations of Wilde], Éibhear Walshe, ''The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies'', Vol. 36, No. 1, QUEERING IRELAND (SPRING/PRINTEMPS 2010), pp. 45-67, via JSTOR</ref> His beliefs were perhaps influenced by his mother Jane, who was a prominent Irish nationalist.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/07/top10s.oscar.wilde "The 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde"], ''[[The Guardian]]', 7 May 2003</ref>

==A few quotations==
Wilde probably said or wrote some of the following things at some point.
*Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
*I sometimes think that [[God]] in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.<ref>''[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M0LDv6xsaiMC&lpg=PA9&dq=I%20think%20that%20God%20in%20creating%20Man%20somewhat%20overestimated%20his%20ability&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q=I%20think%20that%20God%20in%20creating%20Man%20somewhat%20overestimated%20his%20ability&f=false Epigrams of Oscar Wilde]'', Oscar Wilde, Wordsworth, p9</ref>
*If you want to tell people the [[truth]], make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.<ref>"The Nightingale and the Rose", Oscar Wilde; quoted in ''[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ksZTCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT209&dq=If%20you%20want%20to%20tell%20people%20the%20truth%2C%20make%20them%20laugh%2C%20otherwise%20they'll%20kill%20you&pg=PT209#v=onepage&q&f=false Wilde's Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew]'', Eleanor Fitzsimons, The Overlook Press, 2016</ref>
*Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.<ref>''[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M0LDv6xsaiMC&lpg=PA144&dq=Patriotism%20is%20the%20virtue%20of%20the%20vicious&pg=PA144#v=onepage&q=Patriotism%20is%20the%20virtue%20of%20the%20vicious&f=false Epigrams of Oscar Wilde]'', Oscar Wilde, Wordsworth, p144</ref>
*Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.<ref name=soulsocialism/>

==See also==
*[[Lewis Carroll]]
*[[Mark Twain]]
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==External links==
*[[wikisource:en:Author:Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde|Works of Oscar Wilde on Wikisource]]

==References==
{{Reflist|2|80%}}

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[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Christians]]
[[Category:Homophobia]]
[[Category:Ireland]]
[[Category:LGBTQ people]]
[[Category:Socialists]]

Categories: Authors, Christians, Homophobia, Ireland, LGBTQ people, Socialists