Oscar Wilde Biography
Early Years
Oscar Wilde's unconventional life began with an equally unconventional family. He was born Oscar
Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde on October 16, 1854, at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland. His father, Sir
William Wilde, was an eminent Victorian and a doctor of aural surgery.
Wilde's mother, Jane Francesca Elgee (or Lady Wilde), saw herself as a revolutionary and liked to trace
her family through the Italian line of Alighieris, including Dante. An Irish nationalist, she wrote under
the pen name Speranza. She attracted artists like herself and established a literary salon devoted to
intellectual and artistic conversations of the day, through which Lady Wilde brought literature, an
interest in art and culture, and an elegance and appreciation for wit into the lives of her children.
Wilde had two siblings: an older brother named Willie, born in 1852, and a sister, Isola, born in 1856,
but who died at the age of 10. These offspring would not experience a standard, conventional
childhood. Through their home passed intellectuals, artists, and internationally known doctors — and
the children were not left to a governess or nanny. Allowed to mingle and eat with the guests, they
learned to value intellectual and witty conversation, an influence that would have profound and long-
lasting effects on young Oscar Wilde.
Education, Travel, and Celebrity
Wilde was given the advantage of a superior education. At age 11, he entered the exclusive Portora
Royal School and began to assert the scholarship and intellect that would bring him both great celebrity
and great sadness. His long interest in all things Greek began at Portora. Winning several prizes, he
was already a first-rate classics scholar and ready to pursue serious studies.
Wilde went on to Trinity College where he extended his interest in the classics and his long list of
intellectual accomplishments. He won an additional scholarship, made first class in examinations,
received a composition prize for Greek verse, and the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. In 1874 he
received a scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford. His lifelong love of the classics would continue
through his university career and immensely influence his subsequent writing. Little did he know what
turns and twists his life would take when he entered Oxford and came under the influence of three very
powerful professors.
Wilde's four years at Oxford (1874-1878) were dizzy, personality-changing times. By graduation he was
firmly committed to the pursuit of pleasure and the careful devising of a public persona, which included
unconventional clothing and the pose of a dandy. Wilde's direction in life changed because of the
influence of three professors — Ruskin, Pater, and Mahaffy.
The magnetism of Professor John Ruskin, author of Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice, attracted
Wilde's imagination. Ruskin believed civilizations could be judged by their art, which must consider and
reflect moral values. Ruskin also stirred Wilde's aristocratic soul with social concerns in his insistence
that his students identify with the working class and do manual labour. His influence on Wilde's social
conscience is undeniable, and it permeates Wilde's plays and his essay, "The Soul of Man Under
Socialism." Wilde did not, however, agree with Ruskin on the moral purposes of art. Influenced by Keats
and his ideas of truth and beauty, he believed art should be loved and appreciated for its own sake.
, Yet another Oxford influence was Professor Walter Pater, author of Studies in the History of the
Renaissance and Marius the Epicurian. His prose style influenced young Wilde, and his ideas seemed to
fit Wilde's new-found proclivities. Pater emphasized art for art's sake and urged his students to live with
passion and for sensual pleasure, testing new ideas and not conforming to the orthodoxy. Pater was
planting seeds in fertile ground. The Aesthetic Movement, an avant-garde philosophy of the 1870s, was
in full bloom, and its advocates were critical of the heavy, moralistic Victorian taste. They wanted to
pursue forms of beauty in opposition to the art and architecture of the day. Wilde could not agree more.
He went overboard into aesthetics, adopting extravagant clothing styles, which continued when he left
Oxford for London in 1878. He thought of himself as an aesthete, poet, writer, and nonconformist —
and he wanted to be famous or at least infamous.
A third influence on Wilde at Oxford was Mahaffy, an Oxford professor of ancient history. Professor
Mahaffy took him along on trips to Italy and Greece.
By 1878, when Wilde completed his degree at Oxford, he had won the coveted Newdigate Prize for his
poem "Ravenna." Leaving Oxford, Wilde was now ready to take on the world with a classical education
and an unequivocal inclination toward the unconventional. Wilde proved to be a master of public
relations. Virtually unknown and unpublished, he single-handedly created his own celebrity. While his
travels and lectures increased his fame both in England and abroad, his early writings were not critical
successes.
London in the 1870s provided Wilde the opportunity to build a public persona and test the limits of what
society would tolerate. He dressed in strange clothes and often sported flowers such as lilies and
sunflowers. He built a reputation as a minor luminary by courting celebrities. In 1880, he privately
printed his first play, Vera, and the following year published his first book of poems. The poems were a
modest success, but the play died a quick death.
In April 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan opened a play titled Patience in which a primary character,
Bunthorne, was assumed to be based on Wilde. This false assumption was promoted by Wilde through
early attendance — in outrageous clothes — at the play. When the play moved on to New York in
December 1881, Richard D'Oyly Carte, the producer, hired Wilde to do a series of lectures to introduce
the play to American audiences. The press was alerted and ready for his arrival, and Wilde played to
them by proclaiming at customs that he had nothing to declare but his genius.
What began as a modest tour ripened into a six-month nationwide tour. He spoke in New York, Chicago,
Boston, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Omaha (Nebraska), Philadelphia, and Washington. He even lectured in
the mining town of Leadville, Colorado, where his ability to hold his liquor brought him a silver drill and
the good-humoured admiration of the miners. America seemed intrigued by Wilde's odd character, and
he, in turn, admired many things American, including the democratic insistence on universal education.
While in America, Wilde's lectures included "The English Renaissance of Art," "The House Beautiful," and
"Decorative Art in America." As a celebrity, he dined with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton (the famous Harvard professor), and Walt Whitman. He also had
audiences with Lincoln's son, Robert, and Jefferson Davis.
Following his triumphant tour, Wilde had enough money to spend three months in Paris. There he
finished a forgettable play titled The Duchess of Padua. He was befriended once again by celebrities;
this time they were Europeans: Zola, Hugo, Verlaine, Gide, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and Pissarro.
Obviously, early training at his mother's salon had paid off.
He returned to London looking for backers to produce his play. In an attempt to garner backing, he cut
his hair short and dressed more conservatively. When he was unsuccessful in finding producers, he
Early Years
Oscar Wilde's unconventional life began with an equally unconventional family. He was born Oscar
Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde on October 16, 1854, at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland. His father, Sir
William Wilde, was an eminent Victorian and a doctor of aural surgery.
Wilde's mother, Jane Francesca Elgee (or Lady Wilde), saw herself as a revolutionary and liked to trace
her family through the Italian line of Alighieris, including Dante. An Irish nationalist, she wrote under
the pen name Speranza. She attracted artists like herself and established a literary salon devoted to
intellectual and artistic conversations of the day, through which Lady Wilde brought literature, an
interest in art and culture, and an elegance and appreciation for wit into the lives of her children.
Wilde had two siblings: an older brother named Willie, born in 1852, and a sister, Isola, born in 1856,
but who died at the age of 10. These offspring would not experience a standard, conventional
childhood. Through their home passed intellectuals, artists, and internationally known doctors — and
the children were not left to a governess or nanny. Allowed to mingle and eat with the guests, they
learned to value intellectual and witty conversation, an influence that would have profound and long-
lasting effects on young Oscar Wilde.
Education, Travel, and Celebrity
Wilde was given the advantage of a superior education. At age 11, he entered the exclusive Portora
Royal School and began to assert the scholarship and intellect that would bring him both great celebrity
and great sadness. His long interest in all things Greek began at Portora. Winning several prizes, he
was already a first-rate classics scholar and ready to pursue serious studies.
Wilde went on to Trinity College where he extended his interest in the classics and his long list of
intellectual accomplishments. He won an additional scholarship, made first class in examinations,
received a composition prize for Greek verse, and the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. In 1874 he
received a scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford. His lifelong love of the classics would continue
through his university career and immensely influence his subsequent writing. Little did he know what
turns and twists his life would take when he entered Oxford and came under the influence of three very
powerful professors.
Wilde's four years at Oxford (1874-1878) were dizzy, personality-changing times. By graduation he was
firmly committed to the pursuit of pleasure and the careful devising of a public persona, which included
unconventional clothing and the pose of a dandy. Wilde's direction in life changed because of the
influence of three professors — Ruskin, Pater, and Mahaffy.
The magnetism of Professor John Ruskin, author of Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice, attracted
Wilde's imagination. Ruskin believed civilizations could be judged by their art, which must consider and
reflect moral values. Ruskin also stirred Wilde's aristocratic soul with social concerns in his insistence
that his students identify with the working class and do manual labour. His influence on Wilde's social
conscience is undeniable, and it permeates Wilde's plays and his essay, "The Soul of Man Under
Socialism." Wilde did not, however, agree with Ruskin on the moral purposes of art. Influenced by Keats
and his ideas of truth and beauty, he believed art should be loved and appreciated for its own sake.
, Yet another Oxford influence was Professor Walter Pater, author of Studies in the History of the
Renaissance and Marius the Epicurian. His prose style influenced young Wilde, and his ideas seemed to
fit Wilde's new-found proclivities. Pater emphasized art for art's sake and urged his students to live with
passion and for sensual pleasure, testing new ideas and not conforming to the orthodoxy. Pater was
planting seeds in fertile ground. The Aesthetic Movement, an avant-garde philosophy of the 1870s, was
in full bloom, and its advocates were critical of the heavy, moralistic Victorian taste. They wanted to
pursue forms of beauty in opposition to the art and architecture of the day. Wilde could not agree more.
He went overboard into aesthetics, adopting extravagant clothing styles, which continued when he left
Oxford for London in 1878. He thought of himself as an aesthete, poet, writer, and nonconformist —
and he wanted to be famous or at least infamous.
A third influence on Wilde at Oxford was Mahaffy, an Oxford professor of ancient history. Professor
Mahaffy took him along on trips to Italy and Greece.
By 1878, when Wilde completed his degree at Oxford, he had won the coveted Newdigate Prize for his
poem "Ravenna." Leaving Oxford, Wilde was now ready to take on the world with a classical education
and an unequivocal inclination toward the unconventional. Wilde proved to be a master of public
relations. Virtually unknown and unpublished, he single-handedly created his own celebrity. While his
travels and lectures increased his fame both in England and abroad, his early writings were not critical
successes.
London in the 1870s provided Wilde the opportunity to build a public persona and test the limits of what
society would tolerate. He dressed in strange clothes and often sported flowers such as lilies and
sunflowers. He built a reputation as a minor luminary by courting celebrities. In 1880, he privately
printed his first play, Vera, and the following year published his first book of poems. The poems were a
modest success, but the play died a quick death.
In April 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan opened a play titled Patience in which a primary character,
Bunthorne, was assumed to be based on Wilde. This false assumption was promoted by Wilde through
early attendance — in outrageous clothes — at the play. When the play moved on to New York in
December 1881, Richard D'Oyly Carte, the producer, hired Wilde to do a series of lectures to introduce
the play to American audiences. The press was alerted and ready for his arrival, and Wilde played to
them by proclaiming at customs that he had nothing to declare but his genius.
What began as a modest tour ripened into a six-month nationwide tour. He spoke in New York, Chicago,
Boston, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Omaha (Nebraska), Philadelphia, and Washington. He even lectured in
the mining town of Leadville, Colorado, where his ability to hold his liquor brought him a silver drill and
the good-humoured admiration of the miners. America seemed intrigued by Wilde's odd character, and
he, in turn, admired many things American, including the democratic insistence on universal education.
While in America, Wilde's lectures included "The English Renaissance of Art," "The House Beautiful," and
"Decorative Art in America." As a celebrity, he dined with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton (the famous Harvard professor), and Walt Whitman. He also had
audiences with Lincoln's son, Robert, and Jefferson Davis.
Following his triumphant tour, Wilde had enough money to spend three months in Paris. There he
finished a forgettable play titled The Duchess of Padua. He was befriended once again by celebrities;
this time they were Europeans: Zola, Hugo, Verlaine, Gide, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and Pissarro.
Obviously, early training at his mother's salon had paid off.
He returned to London looking for backers to produce his play. In an attempt to garner backing, he cut
his hair short and dressed more conservatively. When he was unsuccessful in finding producers, he
