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Biography of Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills WildeName: Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills WildeBirth Date: October 16, 1854 Death Date: November 30, 1900 Place of Birth: Dublin, Ireland Nationality: British Gender: Male Occupations: author, dramatist, poet Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde The British author Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was part of the "art for art's sake" movement in English literature at the end of the 19th century. He is best known for his brilliant, witty comedies.Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on Oct. 16, 1854. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon; his mother, Jane Francisca Elgee Wilde, wrote popular poetry and prose under the pseudonym Speranza. For three years Wilde was educated in the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he began to attract public attention through the eccentricity of his writing and his style of life.At the age of 23 Wilde entered Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1878 he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna." He attracted a group of followers, and they initiated a personal cult, self-consciously effete and artificial. "The first duty in life," Wilde wrote in Phrases and Philosophies for the Use …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…not die."After his release from prison Wilde lived in France. He attempted to write a play in his pretrial style, but this effort failed. He died in Paris on Nov. 30, 1900. Further Reading R. Hart-Davis's edition of Wilde's Letters (1962) contains an excellent portrait of Wilde. Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (2 vols., 1916), is one of the first and most comprehensive biographies. Frances Winwar, Oscar Wilde and the Yellow 'Nineties (1940), emphasizes Wilde's position in that decade. Other standard biographies are Boris L. Brasol, Oscar Wilde: The Man, the Artist, the Martyr (1938), and André Gide, Oscar Wilde (1951). The major critical studies of Wilde's work are George Woodcock, The Paradox of Oscar Wilde (1950), and St. John Ervine, Oscar Wilde (1951). More recent is Karl Beckson The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia (1998). Arthur Ransome, Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study (1912), has influenced Wilde criticism. William Butler Yeats discusses Wilde in his Autobiography (1938; many later eds.). |