Though Oscar Wilde is know today primarily as a playwright and as the author of the Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) – his only novel – he also wrote poetry, fairy tales, essays and criticism, all of the most popular spokesman in the late XIX century advocating the doctrine of aestheticism, which insisted that art should be primarily politics, religion, science, bourgeois morality.
Oscar Wilde (Fingal o’Flathertie Wills) was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854 to parents who were prominent in Ireland’s social life. His father (William Ralph Wills) was a leading ear and eye surgeon who had founded a hospital a ear before Wilde’s birth and who had received the appointment of Surgeon Oculist in Ordinary created for him in recognition of his international reputation. Wilde’s mother (Francesca Elgee Wilde), nine years younger then her husband, was known in literary and political circles as “Speranza”, a name she adopted in the 1840’s to give hope to Irish nationalists and activists in the woman’s rights movement.
Wilde received an education appropriate to his station in life. When he was 10, he was sent to Portora Royal School (founded by King Charles II) in Enniskillen, Ulster, In October 1971, he entered Trinity College in Dublin, where he distinguished himself by winning various prizes and medals, particularly foe his learning in the classes. In June 1874, he won a scholarship, the classical Demyship, to Magdalen College. At Oxford, Wilde developed the manner of poseur and was widely recognized by his fellow students as a brilliant talker.
On May 29, 1884 he married Constance Lloyd. She came from a respectable legal family in Ireland. They had two children – Cyril and Vyvyan. Probably, his happy family life inspired him to write stories for children. The Happy Prince and other tales was published in 1888, A House of Pomegranates – in 1891-1892.
In October 1900, following his trip to Rome, Wilde was ill with an ear infection that developed into encephalitis. On October 10 underwent an operation. Thus, he died on November at the age of 46. His tomb, sculpted by Sir Jacob Epstein, is in Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
