Oscar Wilde (Author of The Picture of Dorian Gray)

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Oscar Wilde

Born

in Dublin, Ireland

October 16, 1854

Died

November 30, 1900

Genre

Theatre, Poetry, Humor and Comedy, Fiction, Children's

Influences

Balzac, Walter Pater, Edgar Allan Poe, John Ruskin, Peter Kropotkin, L ...more

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Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Joh Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, 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.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. 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). Wilde returned to drama, writing 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. Undiscouraged, 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 An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde 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 abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. ...more

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Oscar Wilde鈥檚 books

Average rating: 4.12 · 2,763,471 ratings · 145,357 reviews · 5,633 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Robert Mighall (Introduction) 4.13 avg rating — 1,746,138 ratings — published 1890 — 189 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Importance of Being Earnest 4.17 avg rating — 394,365 ratings — published 1895 — 2756 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Canterville Ghost 3.88 avg rating — 67,474 ratings — published 1887 — 3204 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde, Richard Allen Cave (Editor) 4.23 avg rating — 51,497 ratings — published 1898 — 146 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Ideal Husband 4.01 avg rating — 43,779 ratings — published 1893 — 1759 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Happy Prince 4.20 avg rating — 36,381 ratings — published 1888 — 463 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Complete Fairy Tales 4.18 avg rating — 33,326 ratings — published 1888 — 2634 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lady Windermere's Fan 3.92 avg rating — 26,373 ratings — published 1892 — 722 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	De Profundis 4.22 avg rating — 23,832 ratings — published 1897	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	厂补濒辞尘茅 3.70 avg rating — 19,888 ratings — published 1891 — 898 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Oscar Wilde…

Series by Oscar Wilde

Macmillan 1962 Series of Classic Fairy Stories (2 books)
by

Oscar Wilde,

John Updike (Introduced by),

Sandro Nardini (illustrator),

Enrico Bagnoli (illustrator)

3.81 avg rating — 31 ratings

In most historical romances, love and marriage go together like...well, a horse and carriage. But what聽if the girl part of the girl-meets-boy...

Polls

June 2019 Short Story/Novella Poll

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde, 37 pages, 1896

69 votes, 23.7%

The Devil by Leo Tolstoy, 56 pages, 1911

62 votes, 21.3%

Lois the Witch by Elizabeth Gaskell, 94 pages, 1861

55 votes, 18.9%

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, 48 pages, 1729

38 votes, 13.1%

The Ballad of the Sad Caf茅 and Other Stories Title Story, by Carson McCullers, 72 pages, 1951

37 votes, 12.7%

The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells, 32 pages, 1904

30 votes, 10.3%

291 total votes

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