Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. He also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism, to which he would later convert on his deathbed. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-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 his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, 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, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel, a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. (Libel Act of 1843) The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest, tried for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In prison he wrote De Profundis (written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.
Quotes·Quotations by Oscar Wilde
Animal
¶ The English country gentleman galloping after a fox--the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Appearance
¶ Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Arts
¶ Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Beauty
¶ Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
[The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890; revised 1891)]
¶ The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
Children·Youth
¶ An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.
¶ I am not young enough to know everything.
Experience
¶ Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
[Mr. Dumby, Act III, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)]
Finance·Money
¶ It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Stars
¶ We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
[Lord Darlington, Act III, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
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