Oscar Wilde Research Paper

Oscar Wilde is a very well known author, playwright, and poet for his highly complimented works. These include The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as many other plays and poems. He is known around the world for his wit, exuberant style and notorious imprisonment for homosexuality. Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin and was a very well liked literary figure in the late Victorian England times.

In his early life, Wilde’s father was a doctor who traveled a lot, and specialized in ear and eye diseases. In 1844,William Wilde founded St. Mark’s Ophthalmic Hospital, built entirely at his own expense because he felt the urge to provide free treatment of the city's poor population who could not

afford it. He also published two books and was appointed a medical advisor. Oscar Wilde’s mother, Jane, wrote poems for a weekly Irish Newspaper editor under the pseudonym “Speranza”, but as newspaper offices got raided and began to close she began to she started to translate Wilhelm Meinhold's gothic horror novel “Sidonia the Sorceress,” because she was a gifted linguist and knew a lot about the major European languages. Oscar Wilde read these translations later on to use it for the darker elements of his own work. Oscar Wilde was also profoundly affected by the loss of his sister, Emily, who died suddenly from a fever, and for his entire life he carried a lock of her hair sealed in an envelope.
Although Oscar’s Wilde father died leaving the family in an awful financial state, Oscar Wilde’s older brother, Henry, paid the family's house mortgage and supported them as much as he could until his death in 1877.

Oscar Wilde did extremely well in school and excelled in oxford. He was especially exceptional in the classics courses. He was awarded multiple scholarships such as the Royal School Scholarship, the Foundation Scholarship, the Demyship scholarship, and even a Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. After graduation, He moved in with his painter friend, Frank Miles in London and published his first collection of poetry in 1881. This collection received many mixed reviews from critics, and assisted in pushing his career in writing forward. In December 1881, Oscar sailed to New York to do many lectures on aesthetics all across the United States. His tour of lectured was only scheduled to last four months, but ended up lasting almost an entire year. He delivered over 140 lectures in 260 days. Wilde also arranged for his play, “Vera,” to be performed in New York the next year. When he returned home from America, he spent the next three months in Paris writing a blank-verse tragedy that they had recruited the actress Mary Anderson for, whom turned it down after he sent it to

her.
Oscar married Constance Lloyd on May 29, 1884.

She was knowledgeable, spoke several European languages and had an extremely outspoken, freethinking mind. Oscar and Constance had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. He obtained a job at the Woman's World magazine from 1887-1889 in order to support his family, and those next six years are known as his most creative period of his life. He published many of his works including: two collections of children's stories, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), and The House of Pomegranates (1892). He also published The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel, in 1890 in an American magazine which he received a lot of criticism

for.
Around the same time that of his greatest literary success, he was involved in an affair with a young man named Lord Alfred Douglas. On February 18, 1895, Douglas's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, found out about the affair and left a card at Wilde’s home with the words "Oscar Wilde: Posing Somdomite," written on it. Even though Wilde's homosexuality was not really a secret, he was infuriated by the note so Wilde sued Queensberry. This decision ruined his life. When the trial began in March, Queensberry and his lawyers used passages from his literary works, as well as the love letters he sent to Douglas, as evidence of Wilde's homosexuality. This quickly dismissed of Wilde's case and he was arrested on "gross indecency," charges. Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to prison for two years on May 25, 1895. Wilde got out of prison in 1897. He was physically exhausted, emotionally depleted and completely broke. He went to France, where he lived in cheap hotels and crashed in his friend’s apartments. He also briefly reunited with Douglas. During these last years, Wilde wrote very little. His only notable work was a poem called "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" about his experiences in prison which he he completed in 1898.
Wilde died of meningitis at 46 on November 30, 1900. More than a century after his death, Wilde is still better remembered for his personal life,than for his literary accomplishments, nevertheless, his witty, creative works, especially The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as his play The Importance of Being Earnest, are considered some of the greatest literary masterpieces from the late Victorian period. Throughout Wilde’s entire life, Wilde was completely committed to the principles of aestheticism. He used this principle in all of his lectures through his works.