Irish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and editor whose social comedies, only novel, fairy tales, and prison writing joined wit to serious questions about art, class, sexuality, punishment, and freedom.
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer, the most successful playwright in London in the 1890s, who was imprisoned for two years for homosexual acts and died destitute in Paris three years after his release. He was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 and died in Paris on 30 November 1900, aged forty-six.
He wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and four society comedies, of which The Importance of Being Earnest is the best known. He also wrote fairy tales and criticism, and, after prison, a long poem about a fellow prisoner hanged at Reading Gaol in 1896.
In 1895, at the height of his success, he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. He lost, and the evidence gathered for the defence was handed to the police. He was tried twice, convicted of gross indecency, and sentenced to two years' hard labour.
He served the full sentence, went into exile in France under an assumed name, and died in a Paris hotel of meningitis three years later.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 at 21 Westland Row in Dublin. His father, William Wilde, was a leading eye and ear surgeon, knighted for his work on the Irish census, and a writer on Irish archaeology and folklore. His mother, Jane, wrote nationalist poetry under the name Speranza and ran a literary salon.[1]
The household was intellectual, Protestant, Irish nationalist and, by the standards of the time, scandal-prone. In 1864 a former patient of his father's, Mary Travers, sued his mother Jane Wilde for libel, and the case was reported in detail in the Dublin papers.
Wilde went to Portora Royal School and then Trinity College Dublin, where he was an outstanding classicist. In 1874 he won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford.
At Oxford Wilde took a double first in classics and won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He also built the public character he kept for the next twenty years: the epigrams, the elaborate clothes, the long hair, and a much-mocked enthusiasm for collecting blue-and-white porcelain.[2]
He was taught by John Ruskin, who held that art should serve a moral purpose, and by Walter Pater, from whom he took the opposite argument, the one that became aestheticism. Art exists for its own sake, not to instruct or improve, and the highest thing a person can do is respond fully to beauty.
By the early 1880s he was well known in London before he had written anything of consequence. Gilbert and Sullivan's opera Patience satirised the aesthetic movement, and Wilde was widely taken to be the model for its aesthete. Its American producers sent him on a lecture tour of the United States in 1882 so that audiences could see the real man. He gave over a hundred lectures and was a considerable success.
Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884. She was a writer, a lecturer and a campaigner for women's dress reform, not only the wife of a famous man. They had two sons, Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, in 1886.
He edited a magazine, The Woman's World, wrote reviews, and published two collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888 and A House of Pomegranates in 1891, written for his sons and still read.
The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in a magazine in 1890 and as a book in 1891. A young man's portrait ages and records his corruption while he stays young and beautiful. The reviews accused it of immorality, and Wilde added a preface to the book edition that begins by insisting there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, only a well or badly written one.[3]
Between 1892 and 1895 Wilde wrote four comedies that made him the most successful playwright in London: Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.[4]
All four are society comedies with the same structure: a respectable person with a hidden past, a scandal about to break, and a great deal of epigram. They work by letting the audience enjoy the wit of people it is also invited to judge.
The Importance of Being Earnest, which opened in February 1895, is the one that has never left the stage. Its plot is a farce about two men inventing fictitious relatives to escape social obligations, and its dialogue is among the most quoted in English comedy.
He also wrote a play in French. Salomé, written in 1891 and published in Paris in 1893, follows Salome as she demands the head of the imprisoned prophet Jokanaan. The Lord Chamberlain refused it a licence in London, and the first production opened in Paris in 1896, while Wilde was in prison.[5]
In February 1895 Wilde had two plays running in the West End at once. Within three months he was in prison.
Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, called Bosie, in 1891. Douglas was twenty, an Oxford undergraduate and the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. The relationship led to Wilde's prosecution, imprisonment and bankruptcy.
Douglas introduced Wilde to a network of young male prostitutes in London, and Wilde spent freely on them. Wilde wrote Douglas letters in explicit terms. Some were stolen and used to demand money from him, and they were read out at his trials.
Douglas's father, John Sholto Douglas, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, was a violent and litigious man best known for the boxing rules that carry his name. He pursued the relationship with increasing fury, threatened restaurants that served them, and in February 1895 left a card at Wilde's club addressed to Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomite — his own misspelling.
Wilde, urged on by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, sued Queensberry for criminal libel.
The defence to a libel charge was to prove the statement true. Queensberry's lawyers hired investigators, found the young men, and prepared to call them as witnesses. Wilde withdrew the prosecution on the third day, which under the law made him liable for Queensberry's costs and bankrupted him, and the evidence collected went straight to the Director of Public Prosecutions.[6]
He was arrested the same day and charged with gross indecency under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. The first trial ended with a hung jury. At the second, in May 1895, he was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour, the maximum available. The judge said he regretted that the sentence was inadequate.[6]
Wilde served his sentence at Pentonville, Wandsworth and, from November 1895, Reading Gaol. Hard labour meant the treadwheel and picking oakum, on a diet that broke his health. He was refused books and writing materials for much of the first year.
His mother died in February 1896 and he was not allowed to attend the funeral. Constance changed the family name to Holland and took the boys abroad. She visited him in Reading Gaol in February 1896 to tell him his mother had died; he never saw his sons again.
In the last months, under a more humane governor, he was permitted paper. He used it to write a long letter to Douglas that was published after his death as De Profundis: partly a reckoning with the relationship and partly a self-examination.[7]
Wilde was released on 19 May 1897 and left England the same night. He never returned. He lived in France and Italy under the name Sebastian Melmoth, on money from friends, and briefly resumed the relationship with Douglas, which their families ended by cutting off the allowances they each depended on.
He wrote one more thing. The Ballad of Reading Gaol, published in 1898 under his prison number, C.3.3., is about the hanging of a soldier he had watched being led to execution, and about what prison does to men. It sold well, and he was not named as its author until the seventh edition.[7]
He died on 30 November 1900 at the Hôtel d'Alsace, 13 rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris, now L'Hotel, of meningitis arising from an infection in his ear, probably dating from a fall in prison. He was forty-six. He was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed.[8]
He was buried at Bagneux and moved in 1909 to Père Lachaise, where Jacob Epstein's carved angel marks the grave in division 89. Visitors covered it in lipstick kisses for years until a glass barrier was installed in 2011.[9]
The Importance of Being Earnest has been performed continuously for over a century, and many of Wilde's epigrams are still in common use.
The trials are the second reason he is still read and argued about. They were a public demonstration of what the law could do to a man for his private life, and the sentence was carried out to the last day. Wilde became, without intending it and partly through De Profundis and the Ballad, one of the first figures around whom later arguments for homosexual law reform were organised. In 2017 the British government issued a posthumous pardon to men convicted under the law that convicted him, and it is generally called the Alan Turing law after another of its victims.
An illustrated English edition of Salomé, with drawings by Aubrey Beardsley, followed in 1894, a year after the French text was published in Paris.
Born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde on 16 October at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, son of the surgeon William Wilde and the nationalist poet Jane Wilde, who wrote as Speranza.
Enters Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. A former patient, Mary Travers, sues his mother Jane Wilde for libel, and the case is reported in detail in the Dublin papers.
Enters Trinity College Dublin, where he excels at classics.
Wins a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he is taught by Walter Pater and John Ruskin.
Takes a double first in classics and wins the Newdigate Prize for poetry.
Wins Oxford's Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna.
Publishes his first collection, Poems. Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience satirises the aesthetic movement he represents.
Lectures across the United States for a year, giving more than a hundred lectures, at the invitation of Patience's American producers.
Marries Constance Lloyd.
His son Cyril is born. The Criminal Law Amendment Act creates the offence of gross indecency, under which he is later convicted.
His son Vyvyan is born.
Becomes editor of The Woman's World.
Publishes The Happy Prince and Other Tales, written for his sons.
The Picture of Dorian Gray appears in a magazine and is attacked as immoral.
Publishes the book edition of Dorian Gray with a preface insisting there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Meets Lord Alfred Douglas.
Lady Windermere's Fan opens and is a success.
A Woman of No Importance opens. Salomé, written in French, is banned in Britain because it depicts biblical characters.
An Ideal Husband opens in January and The Importance of Being Earnest in February. He has two plays running in the West End at once.
The Marquess of Queensberry leaves a card at Wilde's club in February accusing him of posing as a sodomite, misspelling the word.
Sues Queensberry for criminal libel and withdraws on the third day. He is arrested the same day, bankrupted by the costs, and charged with gross indecency.
The first criminal trial ends with a hung jury. At the second, in May, he is convicted and sentenced to two years with hard labour, the maximum available.
His mother dies in February. He is not allowed to attend the funeral. Constance changes the family name to Holland and takes their sons abroad.
Writes the long letter to Douglas later published as De Profundis. Is released on 19 May and leaves England the same night, never to return.
Lives in France and Italy under the name Sebastian Melmoth, on money from friends.
Publishes The Ballad of Reading Gaol under his prison number, C.3.3. Constance dies in Genoa.
Dies on 30 November in a hotel in the rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris, of meningitis from an ear infection, aged forty-six. He is received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed.
An abridged De Profundis is published.
His remains are moved from Bagneux to Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Jacob Epstein's carved angel is installed on the grave.
The complete text of De Profundis is published for the first time.
Homosexual acts between men are partly decriminalised in England and Wales, seventy-two years after Wilde's conviction.
A memorial window to Wilde is installed in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
A glass barrier is installed around the Père Lachaise tomb, after decades of lipstick kisses damaged the stone.
The British government issues posthumous pardons to men convicted under the law that convicted Wilde.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
Only the shallow know themselves.
How Oscar appears in its pages: The letter's 'I' — Wilde at forty-two, in the fourteenth month of a two-year hard-labour sentence at Reading Gaol for gross indecency. He wrote the letter in the winter of 1896–97 on numbered prison-issued sheets and was released in May 1897.
How Oscar appears in its pages: The poem's 'I' — Wilde in the fifteen months he served at Reading Gaol (November 1895 – May 1897) after his conviction for gross indecency. The published title page names him not as Oscar Wilde but as 'C.3.3.', the prison identifier for cell 3 on the third landing of C block. His name replaced the identifier on the seventh edition in June 1899.
Sontag dedicated "Notes on 'Camp'" (Partisan Review, 1964) to Oscar Wilde and quoted him throughout it, so the essay that made her famous reads as an argument conducted with a writer dead sixty-four years.
Mishima began writing stories at twelve, at the Gakushūin school in Tokyo. Accounts of those years name Oscar Wilde among the European writers he worked from, alongside Raymond Radiguet, Jean Cocteau, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Baudelaire.
It is short, immediately funny, and introduces Oscar Wilde's method of exposing social rules through names, manners, and perfectly timed dialogue.
Oscar Wilde's first play, a Russian political melodrama about a revolutionary torn between a planned assassination and love for the future ruler.
Oscar Wilde's first commercial book, a decorated collection shaped by classical myth, Catholic imagery, travel, love, and the Aesthetic movement.
An early five-act blank-verse tragedy in which a young man seeking revenge in Renaissance Italy falls in love with the wife of the ruler he plans to kill.
Five literary fairy tales about generosity, vanity, friendship, poverty, and the cost of seeing other people's suffering.
Four darker literary fairy tales about sacrifice, beauty, art, poverty, and the harm done when one life is valued above another.
Four essays and dialogues in which Oscar Wilde argues that criticism is creative, art need not copy life, and a work should not be reduced to a moral lesson.
Comic and supernatural stories about murder as duty, a ghost who cannot frighten Americans, a secretless socialite, and a disputed Shakespeare portrait.
Oscar Wilde's only novel: a beautiful young man stays unchanged while his hidden portrait records age, cruelty, and guilt.
An essay arguing that poverty should be ended by changing property relations, not managed through charity, so each person can develop freely.
A society comedy in which a young wife suspects her husband, an excluded woman returns, and a fan becomes evidence that tells the wrong story.
Oscar Wilde's one-act tragedy, written in French, in which Salome demands the head of the prophet Jokanaan after he rejects her.
A country-house comedy that turns, in its second act, into an unsparing indictment of the double standard that punished the woman and promoted the man.
Six very short parables that use biblical language to unsettle simple lessons about miracles, suffering, knowledge, and desire.
A long, highly decorated poem in which a speaker questions a sphinx about imagined lovers, gods, monsters, and ancient history.
A long poem about a prisoner's execution and the institution that makes every person inside share the waiting, fear, shame, and isolation.
A political comedy about blackmail, a fortune built on a secret, and the damage caused by demanding moral perfection from another person.
Oscar Wilde's best-known comedy: two men invent useful false identities, two women insist on marrying someone named Ernest, and a handbag resolves the plot.
Oscar Wilde's long prison letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, combining accusation, self-criticism, memory, suffering, art, and a new interpretation of Christ.
An Irish writer, born in Dublin in 1854 and died in Paris in 1900. He was the most successful playwright in London in the 1890s, wrote the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and was imprisoned for two years for homosexual acts.
He sued the Marquess of Queensberry, his lover's father, for criminal libel in 1895. Queensberry's defence was to prove the accusation true, and his investigators found young men willing to testify. Wilde withdrew on the third day, the evidence went to the prosecuting authorities, and he was tried and convicted of gross indecency, receiving two years with hard labour, the maximum sentence.
A long letter Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas in the last months of his imprisonment, when he was finally allowed paper. It examines their relationship and his own life, and was published after his death, at first heavily abridged. The full text did not appear until 1962.
Hard labour meant the treadwheel and picking oakum on a diet that ruined his health, and he was refused books and writing materials for much of the first year. His mother died while he was inside and he could not attend the funeral. He was bankrupt, his wife changed their sons' surname, and he never saw his children again.
Of meningitis arising from an ear infection, probably dating from a fall in prison, on 30 November 1900 in a cheap hotel in the rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was forty-six and living under the name Sebastian Melmoth. He was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed.
In Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where his remains were moved in 1909 from Bagneux. Jacob Epstein carved the winged figure on the tomb. Visitors kissed the stone in lipstick for decades until a glass barrier was installed in 2011.
Buried at · 1909
Oscar Wilde died in Paris in 1900 and was first buried at Bagneux Cemetery. His remains were transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1909. Jacob Epstein's monument was installed over the grave in division 89.
Influenced
Sontag dedicated "Notes on 'Camp'" (Partisan Review, 1964) to Oscar Wilde and quoted him throughout it, so the essay that made her famous reads as an argument conducted with a writer dead sixty-four years.
Influenced
Mishima began writing stories at twelve, at the Gakushūin school in Tokyo. Accounts of those years name Oscar Wilde among the European writers he worked from, alongside Raymond Radiguet, Jean Cocteau, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Baudelaire.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Oscar Wilde and their work.
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Reference entry used for the Dublin childhood, Oxford, the plays and the trials.
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Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the Oscar Wilde page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Oscar Wilde page.
Archival evidence used to document the historical record connected to Oscar Wilde.
Reference article cross-checked for the family, the 1895 trials and sentence, the prison years and his death in Paris.
Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the Oscar Wilde page.
Biographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Oscar Wilde.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Oscar Wilde page.
These references anchor the page in the documented record and in the scholarly conversations around Oscar Wilde. Every claim on this page traces back to one or more of the works listed here.
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