Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's spectacular fall from grace is one of the best-known and most tragic stories in the history of literature. Born in Dublin in 1854, the son of an eye surgeon and a well-known poet, Wilde graduated from Oxford in 1878 and moved to London where he rapidly became a celebrity and the most prominent figure in the Aesthetic movement. 

A lecture tour to the United States and Gilbert and Sullivan's mockery of him in their comic operetta Patience only increased his fame. He published poetry, fairy tales and a scandalously successful novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, about a golden youth who retained his beauty while the marks of his sins showed only on his painted portrait. 

In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd and moved into the house in Tite Street, Chelsea which is now marked by a blue plaque. By the mid-1890s he was the feted author of epigrammatic comedies like Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. 

But in 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, disapproving of Wilde's friendship with his son Lord Alfred Douglas, sent a note addressed to Wilde, "posing as a Sodomite." Unwisely Wilde decided to sue for libel and set in motion a sequence of events that ended with him prosecuted and imprisoned for homosexuality. After his release from prison Wilde was a broken man and he died in exile in Paris in 1900. 

Stories of his last words emphasise that he retained his wit to the end. Seriously ill in a cheap Paris hotel room he is reputed to have said, "This wall-paper will be the death of me - one of us will have to go". 


Vocabulary

the Aesthetic movementThis was a literary and artistic movement which held that art should be a thing of beauty and should not be concerned with politics or religion

mockeryThis is unkind or critical comments about someone

comic operettaThis is a humorous musical play

the feted authorThis means that the writer was highly praised and regarded

epigrammaticThis means that the play used a lot of epigrams, which are short, and often humorous, sayings or poems

to sue for libelThis is to take someone to court for libel, which is the writing of lies that are harmful to someone's reputation

homosexualityThis is the sexual attraction for someone of the same sex

to be in exileThis is the state of living abroad because your government has forced you to leave your country, or (as in this context) because you feel you cannot remain there

he is reputed to have saidThis means that we do not know for certain that he said this, but we believe it to be true

For the original page click here