Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde, his real name, was born in Dublin the 16th October in 1854. He was in the fraternity of Victorian dramatists, among Dion Boucicault (1820-1890), Tom Robertson (1829-1871), Tom Taylor (1817-1880), W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911), and Arthur Wing Pinero (1859-1934. Being a disciple of Walter Pater, he founded the Aesthetic Movement, which put forward “art for art is sake”. He got married to Constance Lloyd, in 1884. After that, he started to write children’s books and, his first big novel was The picture of Dorian Gray, then, he wrote comedies like Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), and An Ideal Husband (1894), finally his latest novel was The importance of being Ernest. After serve sentence, because of a several homosexual activities, he leaved the United Kingdom, and moved to France. He never come back to his home town.
He began to publish his poems when he started in the Trinity College. He published them in magazines, such as Kottabos and Dublin University Magazine. Poems was his first published book, having a great spectation, most of all, in 1882.
He came back to Dublin. There he fell in love with Florence Balcombe, but she was in a relationship with Bram Stoker. Because of it, Wilde decided to leave Ireland in 1878. He went to London, Paris and The USA.
During he was in London, he met Constance Lloyd, the daughter of the queen’s counselor. He asked her for marriage, and she accepted. They got married in 1884. He had one son and one daughter, but then they separated. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned, and Consatance Lloyd decided to change the children’s surnames, and Wilde had to resign the custody of his children.
When he wrote, he had a big influence of John Ruslin and Walter Pater. Both of them defended the importance of the art in the life. Wilde, in his most famous book, The picture of Dorian Gray, thought about it. It can be seen in the second reading of the book, most of all in the famous quote «All art is quite useless». He started to be in the Aestheticism Movement.
He started to have long hair, to practice masculine sports, decorate his house with erotic porcelain and he began to be a little bit ostentatious. First, it was very strange and all the people laugh at him and thought he was ridiculous, but finally, it began to be a respected lifestyle, particularly of him.
Wilde had a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. It was a big scandal, most of all, when the marquees of Queensberry, wrote a note in which was written “To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite." Wilde reported him, and after some courts, he was in prison for two years. After that, he wrote De Porfudis (1897), to Lord Alfred Douglas, and The ballad of reading Goal, talking about the problems of being in prison, influenced by the experience of one friend. Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas were together again, but their families were threatened with take his savings.
Wilde went to Paris. There he changed his name to Sebastian Melmoth. There he died the 30th of November of 1900.
