oscar wilde

Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest "celebrities" of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years' hard labour after being convicted of homosexual relationships, described as "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry, never to return to Ireland or Britain.
Birth and early life
Statue of Oscar Wilde by Danny Osborne in Dublin's Merrion Square (Archbishop Ryan Park)
Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin - now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin. He was the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Francesca Wilde. The other siblings were an older brother known as Willie and a sister named Isola.
His father's extramarital affairs produced three other children: Henry Wilson, born in 1838, and Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849 respectively. Emily and Mary died in a horrifying accident in 1871 when the dress of one caught fire; her sister rushed her out of the house and down the steps to roll her in the snow, but her dress also took fire, and both died.
Isola died aged eight of what appears to have been meningitis. Wilde's poem Requiescat is dedicated to her memory: "Tread lightly, she is near/ Under the snow... All my life's buried here/ Heap earth upon it..."
When William Wilde died in 1876, Henry Wilson supported the family until his own sudden death a year later.
Jane Wilde, under the pseudonym "Speranza" (Italian word for 'hope'), wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 and was a life-long Irish nationalist.[1] William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services to medicine.[1] He also wrote books about archaeology and folklore. A renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the city's poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
In 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, where Wilde's sister, Isola, was born the following year. Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests that included Sheridan le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson.
Education
Dublin, Portora, & Dublin
Oscar Wilde was educated at home until he was nine, where he learned French and German. He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh,[2] spending the summer months with his family in rural Wicklow, Waterford, Wexford and at his father's family home in Mayo. There Wilde played with the older George Moore.
Leaving Portora, Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother Willie Wilde. His tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, the leading Greek scholar at Trinity, interested him in Greek literature. Wilde later, though having reservations about Mahaffy, was generous with his praise calling him "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who interested me in Greek things".[2] For his part Mahaffy first boasted of having created Wilde, only, later, he credit him as "the only blot on my tutorship".[3] Wilde quickly established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, and won a Scholarship by competitive examination in his second, and then, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, discussing intellectual and artistic subjects such as Rosetti and Swinburne weekly. Wilde quickly became an established member - The Members' suggestion book for 1874contains two pages of banter (sportingly) mocking Wilde's emergent aestheticism. He even presented a paper entitled "Aesthetic Morality".
Oxford
He was encouraged to compete for a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, which he won easily having already studied Greek for over nine years. He studied from 1874 to 1878 at Magdalen, and became a part of the Aesthetic movement; one of its tenets was to make an art of life. He was rusticated for one term, having returned to college late from a trip to Greece with Prof. Mahaffy.
On matriculating in 1874, he had applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected.[4] Nevertheless, when the Union's librarian requested a presentation copy of Poems (1881), Wilde complied. After a debate called by Oliver Elton, the book was condemned for alleged plagiarism. The Librarian, who had liked the book and wanted it for the library, and returned to Wilde with a note of apology.[5][6]
Attracted by its dress, secrecy and ritual Wilde petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason.[7] He also deeply considered converting to Catholicism, discussing the possibility with clergy several times. Ellman reports that Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX while visiting Rome. He eagerly read Cardinal Newman's books, though during a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commmented he "would be awfully sorry to give [freemasonry] up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy".[2] His tone became altogether more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastain Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had handled some high profile conversions. Neither his father, who threatened to cut his funds, nor Mahaffy, thought much of the plan; but mostly Wilde, the supreme individualist balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed. He retained a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.
While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He dressed flambloyantly and entertained and spent lavishly. Lillies became a dominant symbol of Wilde, and his remark "Everyday I find it harder and harder to live up to my blue china", quickly became famous grasped as a slogan for the aesthetes, and as the epitome of their terrible vacousness by critics.
Legends persist that this behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms (which still survive as student accommodation at his old college) vandalised, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and aestheticism generally became a recognised pose. Wilde was frowned upon by some of his fellow students, who were suspicious of his poses, but respected in his own aesthetic circle.[8] Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral".
Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. Though he did not meet Prof. Pater personally until his third year, he was enthralled by Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which had been published during Wilde's final year in Dublin.[2] Pater argued that man's sensibility to beauty should be refined above all else, and that each moment should be felt to its fullest extent. Years later in De Profundis, Wilde called Pater's Studies... "that book that has had such a strange influence over my life". He learned tracts of the book by heart, and carried it with him on travels in later years. Pater gave Wilde his sense of almost flippant devotion to art, though it was Ruskin who gave him a purpose for it. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aesthism in Pater for him the importance of art lay in its potential for the betterment of society. He too admired beauty, but it must be ailled to moral good. When Wilde eagerly attended his lecture series The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence, he learned about aesthetics as the non-matematical elements of painting. Despite being given to neither early rising nor manual labour, Wilde volunteered for Ruskin's project to convert a swampy country lane into a smart road neatly edged with flowers.[2] Wilde later commented ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless". The statement was meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of art for art's sake, but he argued later for the immorality of non-creative work, and the dehumanisation the working classes experience by manual labour. By 1879 Wilde started to teach aesthetic values in London.
While at Magdalen, Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read at Encaenia. In November 1878, he graduated with a rare double first in his B.A. of classical moderations and Literae Humaniores, or "Greats".
Apprenticeship of an aesthete
After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She, however, became engaged to Bram Stoker who was later the author of Dracula, and they married in 1878.[9] Wilde was disappointed but stoic, writing her a gracious letter and remembering fondly the years they had spent together.[2] He also stated his intention to leave Ireland "probably for good". That he did in 1878, and returned to his native country only twice, for brief visits.
Unsure of his next step, he wrote to various contacts looking for Classics positions at Oxbridge, it was a lean year, though Wilde competed for the fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, which he did not take altogher seriously. His mother encouraged him to stand for Parliament, though he continued to try to use his classical learning. The Rise of Historical Criticism was his submission for the Chancellor's Essay prize of 1879, which, though no longer a student, he was stil eligible to enter. Though its subject "Historical Criticism among the Ancients" seemed ready made for Wilde - with both his skill in composition and ancient learning, Wilde struggles to find his voice with the long, flat, scholarly style. Unusually, no prize was awarded that year.[2] Though the essay was later published in "Miscellanies", the final section of a 1905 edition of Wilde's collected works.[10] With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachleor in London. Wilde's address in the 1881 British Census is given as 1 Tite Street, London. The head of the household is listed as Frank Miles, with whom Wilde shared rooms at this address. Wilde would spend the next six years in London and Paris, and in the United States, where he travelled to deliver lectures.
To the New World and back
Aestheticism in general was caricatured in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience (1881). While Patience was a success in New York, it was not known how much the aesthetic movement had penetrated the rest of America. So producer Richard D'Oyly Carte invited Wilde for a lecture tour of North America. D'Oyly Carte felt this tour would "prime the pump" for the U.S. tour of Patience, making the ticket-buying public aware of one of the aesthetic movement's charming personalities. Duly arranged, Wilde arrived on 3 January 1882 aboard the SS Arizona. Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that "I have nothing to declare except my genius", although there is no contemporary evidence for the remark.

Keller cartoon from the Wasp of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882
During his tour of the United States and Canada, Wilde was torn apart by no small number of critics—The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and aestheticism—but he was also surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado.[11]
His earnings, plus expected income from the Duchess of Padua allowed him to live at leisure in Paris for several months, where he met Robert Sherard.[2] When the play fell through, he returned to England to lecture there, Personal Impressions of America, The Value of Art in Modern Life and Dress were among his topics. In London, he had met Constance Lloyd in 1881, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. She was visiting Dublin in 1884, when Wilde was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre, Constance and an 18 year old W.B Yeats were among the audience. He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St. James Church[12] in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 was generous, but the Wildes' tastes were relativly luxurious, and after preaching to others for so long, their home was expected to set new standards of design. 16 Tite Street was renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).
Criticism in the Pall Mall Gazette provoked a letter in his defense, and soon Wilde was a contributor to that and other journals during the years 1885-1887. He enjoyed reviewing and journalism, a form that suited his style, his reviews were largely chatty and postive.[2]
Editorship: 1887-1889
With his youth nearly over, and a family to support, Wilde became the editor of "The Lady's World" magazine, which he promptly renamed The Woman's World.[2] During his editorship, Wilde raised the tone of the magazine, adding serious articles on parenting, culture and politics; while keeping the discussions of fashion and arts. Two pieces of fiction were usually included, one to be read to children, the other for the ladies themselves. Wilde's used his wide artistic acquaintance to solicit good contributions, including Lady Wilde and his wife Constance, while his own "Literary and other notes" were popular and amusing themselves.[2] The initial vigour and excitement he brought to the job began to fade as administration, commuting and office became tedious. His disinterest showed in the magazine's declining quality and flagging sales. He increasingly sent instructions by letter from home, and as he began a new period of creative work: he was writing his fairy tales, short fiction and novel at this time, and his own column appeared less regularly. In October 1889, at the end of the second volume, Wilde left. The magazine ceased to exist shortly afterwards.
Sexuality
Robert Ross at twenty-four
Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony
Robert Ross had read Wilde's poems before they met, even been beaten for doing so, yet he was also unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality. By Richard Ellmann's account, Ross, "...so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde". Later, Ross boasted to Lord Alfred Douglas that he was his first homosexual experience and there seems to have been much jealousy between them. Soon, Wilde would have more homosexual encounters in local bars or brothels. In Wilde's words, the relations were akin to "feasting with panthers,"[13] and he revelled in the risk: "the danger was half the excitement."[13] In his public writings, Wilde's first celebration of homosexual love can be found in "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889), a short story in which a theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of young male Elizabethan actor "Willie Hughes" is advanced, retracted, and then propunded again.
In the early summer of 1891 poet Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. An intimate friendship immediately sprang up between Wilde and Douglas, but it was not initially sexual, nor did the sexual activity progress far when it did eventually take place. According to Douglas, speaking in his old age, for the first six months their relations remained on a purely intellectual and emotional level. Despite the fact that "from the second time he saw me, when he gave me a copy of Dorian Gray which I took with me to Oxford, he made overtures to me. It was not till I had known him for at least six months and after I had seen him over and over again and he had twice stayed with me in Oxford, that I gave in to him. I did with him and allowed him to do just what was done among boys at Winchester and Oxford ... Sodomy never took place between us, nor was it attempted or dreamed of. Wilde treated me as an older one does a younger one at school." After Wilde realised that Douglas only consented in order to please him, Wilde permanently ceased his physical attentions.[14]
Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas in 1893
For a few years they lived together more or less openly in a number of locations. Wilde and some within his upper-class social group also began to speak about homosexual-law reform, and their commitment to "The Cause" was formalised by the founding of a highly secretive organisation called the Order of Chaeronea, of which Wilde was a member. A homosexual pornographic novel, Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, written at about the same time and clandestinely published in 1893, has been attributed to Oscar Wilde, although it was possibly an ensemeble effort by a number of Wilde's friends, with Wilde as editor. Wilde's authorship has never been ascertained, the book, for instance, is not listed in Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, (S. Mason, 1914).
Lord Alfred's first mentor had been his cosmopolitan grandfather Alfred Montgomery. His older brother Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig possibly had an intimate association with the Prime Minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, which ended on Francis' death in an unexplained shooting accident. Lord Alfred's father John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals, or as he phrased it in a letter, "Snob Queers like Rosebery".[15] As he had attempted to do with Rosebery, Queensberry confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred on several occasions, but each time Wilde was able to mollify him.
Divorced and spending wildly, Queensberry was known for his outspoken views and the boxing roughs who often accompanied him. He abhorred his younger son and plagued the boy with threats to cut him off if he did not stop idling his life away. Queensberry was determined to end the friendship with Wilde. Wilde was in full flow of rehearsal when Bosie returned from a diplomatic posting to Cairo, around the time Queensberry visited Wilde at his Tite Street home. He angrily pushed past Wilde's servant and entered the ground-floor study, shouting obscenities and asking Wilde about his divorce. Wilde became incensed, but it is said he calmly told his manservant that Queensberry was the most infamous brute in London, and that he was not to be shown into the house ever again. It is said that, despite the presence of a bodyguard, Wilde forced Queensberry to leave in no uncertain terms.
On the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest Queensberry further planned to insult and socially embarrass Wilde by throwing a bouquet of turnips. Wilde was tipped off, and Queensberry was barred from entering the theatre. Wilde took legal advice against him, and wished to prosecute, but his friends refused to give evidence against the Marquess and hence the case was dropped. Wilde and Bosie left London for a holiday in Monte Carlo. While they were there, on 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albermarle, with a scrawled inscription accusing Wilde of being a "posing somdomite" [sic].[16]
Trials
The Marquess of Queensberry's calling card with the offending inscription "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic]"
Wilde vs Queensbury
Wilde made a complaint of criminal libel against the Marquess of Queensberry based on the calling card incident, and the Marquess was arrested but later freed on bail. The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Alfred Taylor and Lord Alfred Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of detectives, with the help of the actor Charles Brookfield, had directed Queensberry's lawyers (led by Edward Carson QC) to the world of the Victorian underground. Here Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, crossdressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses.[17]
The trial opened on 3 April 1895 amongst scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. After a shaky start, Wilde regained some ground when defending his art from attacks of perversion. The Picture of Dorian Gray came under fierce moral criticism, but Wilde fended it off with his usual charm and confidence on artistic matters. Some of his personal letters to Lord Alfred were examined, their wording challenged as inappropriate and evidence of immoral relations. Queensberry's legal team proposed that the libel was published for the public good, but it was only when the prosecution moved on to sexual matters that Wilde balked. He was challenged on the reason given for not kissing a young servant; Wilde had replied, "He was a particularly plain boy—unfortunately ugly—I pitied him for it."[18] Counsel for the defence, scenting blood, pressed him on the point. Wilde hesitated, complaining of Carson's insults and attempts to unnerve him. The prosecution eventually dropped the case, after the defence threatened to bring boy prostitutes to the stand to testify to Wilde's corruption and influence over Queensberry's son, effectively crippling the case.

'The Crown vs Wilde
After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for and (after a delay that would have permitted Wilde, had he wished, to escape to the continent) later served on him at the Cadogan Hotel, Knightsbridge. Robert Ross found him there with Reginald Turner; both men advised Wilde to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late."[19] That moment was immortalised in a poem by Sir John Betjeman, although he himself said that it was "complained that it wasn't true - but I happened to like it".[citation needed] Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. In British legislation of the time, this term implied homosexual acts not amounting to buggery, which was an offence under a separate statute.[20][21] After his arrest Wilde sent Robert Ross to his home in Tite Street with orders to remove certain items and Ross broke into the bedroom to rescue some of Wilde's belongings. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway where he received daily visits from Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde in the dock, from The Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895
Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895. Wilde had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to take the stand; however, he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Ross and many others also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination Wilde presented an eloquent defence:

Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name?"

Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."
The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict and Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clark, was finally able to agree bail. Wilde was freed from Holloway and went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of Wilde's firm friends. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 bail,[22] having disagreed with Wilde's heinous treatment by the press and the courts. Edward Carson, it was said, asked for the service to let up on Wilde.[23] His request was denied. If the Crown was seen to give up at that point, it would have appeared that there was one rule for some and not others, and outrage could have followed.
The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge himself described the sentence as "totally inadequate for a case such as this," although it was the maximum sentence allowed for the charge under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.[24]
Decline: 1895-1900
Imprisonment
Wilde was imprisoned first in Pentonville and then in Wandsworth prison in London, and finally transferred in November to Reading Prison, some 30 miles west of London. Wilde knew the town of Reading from happier times when boating on the Thames and also from visits to the Palmer family, including a tour of the famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory which was quite close to the prison.
Now known as prisoner C. 3.3, (which described the fact that he was in block C, floor three, cell three) he was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but a later governor was more amenable. Eventually, when Wilde was allowed to have books sent in to him, the first he requested was The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by his Oxford mentor, Walter Pater. The book had been a comfort to him in the past.[25]
Wilde was championed by the Liberal MP and reformer Richard B. Haldane who had helped transfer him and afforded him the literary catharsis he needed. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send while still a prisoner, but which he was allowed to take with him at the end of his sentence. On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). Ross published a much expurgated version of the letter (about a third of it) in 1905 (four years after Wilde's death) with the title De Profundis, expanding it slightly for an edition of Wilde's collected works in 1908, and then donated it to the British Museum on the understanding that it would not be made public until 1960. In 1949, Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland published it again, including parts formerly omitted, but relying on a faulty typescript bequeathed to him by Ross. Its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962, in "The Letters of Oscar Wilde."

Exile
Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on 19 May 1897, he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile abroad and cut off from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
Wilde spent the summer of 1897 with Robert Ross in in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, it was a commercial success and brought him a little money. The title page identified the author as "C.3.3." (Wilde's prisoner number) it was only after the sixth printing, that his name was added in parentheses, though many in literary circles knew Wilde to be the author.
Although Douglas had been the cause of his misfortunes, he and Wilde were reunited in August 1897 at Rouen. This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men. Constance Wilde was already refusing to meet Wilde or allow him to see their sons, though she kept him supplied with money. During the latter part of 1897, Wilde and Douglas lived together near Naples, but for financial and other reasons, they separated.[26]
Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris, where he lived in poverty. He corrected and published his plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, but otherwise had lost the "intense joy that creation requires". He spent much time wandering the Boulevards alone, and spent what little money he had on alcohol. A series of embarrassing encounters with English visitors, or Frenchmen he had known in better days, further damaged his spirit. He is quoted as saying, just a month before his death, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go."
His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death, their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure", Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party."[27] Turner was one of the very few of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at his bedside when he died.The tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery

Death
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the meningitis; Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années) and did not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death.[28]
On his deathbed Wilde was received into the Roman Catholic church and Robert Ross, in his letter to More Adey (dated 14 December 1900), states "He was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when I asked him whether he understood. He pressed our hands. I then sent in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found Father Cuthbert Dunne ... who came with me at once and administered Baptism and Extreme Unction. - Oscar could not take the Eucharist".[29] Wilde had long maintained an interest in the Catholic Church having met with Pope Pius IX in 1877 and describing it as "for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do".[30] During his time in prison Wilde had pored over the works of Saint Augustine, Dante and Cardinal Newman.
Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. The epitaph is a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals which were broken off by a visitor and subsequently kept as a paperweight by a succession of cemetery keepers; their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a forty-minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.[31]

Aestheticism and philosophy
1881 caricature in Punch
The aesthetic movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete in Britain, Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was sometimes ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral".

Politics
For much of his life, Wilde advocated socialism, which he argued "will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism".[32] He also had a strong libertarian streak as shown in his poem Sonnet to Liberty and, subsequent to reading the works of Peter Kropotkin (whom he described as "a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia"[13]);he declared himself an anarchist.[33] Wilde was concerned about the effect of moralising on art: following his vision of art as separate from life, he thought that the government most amiable to artists was no government at all. This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, the leading intellectual socialists of the time.[34] In "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" he presents a vision of society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity, and can be expended entirely on artistic creation. Other political influences on Wilde may have been William Morris and John Ruskin.[35] Wilde was also a pacifist and quipped that "When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her". In addition to his primary
political text, the essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism", Wilde wrote several letters to the Daily Chronicle advocating prison reform and was the sole signatory of George Bernard Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886.[36]
In Lady Florence Dixie's 1890 novel "Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900" women win the right to vote after the protagonist, Gloriana, poses as a man to get elected to the House of Commons. The male character she impersonates is clearly based on that of Wilde. Dixie was an aunt of Lord Alfred Douglas.[37]
Biographies
Oscar Wilde's house in Tite Street, Chelsea

• After Wilde's death, his friend Frank Harris wrote a biography, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. Of his other close friends, Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, Charles Ricketts and Lord Alfred Douglas variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence.
• An account of the argument between Frank Harris, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde as to the advisability of Wilde's prosecuting Queensberry can be found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
• In 1946, Hesketh Pearson published The Life of Oscar Wilde (Methuen), containing materials derived from conversations with Bernard Shaw, George Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and many others who had known or worked with Wilde. This is a lively read, although inevitably somewhat dated in its approach. It gives a particularly vivid impression of what Wilde's conversation must have been like.
• In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989.
• In 1955 Sewell Stokes wrote a novel, Beyond His Means, based on the life of Oscar Wilde.
• In 1983 Peter Ackroyd published The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, a novel in the form of a pretended memoir.
• In 1987 literary biographer Richard Ellmann published his detailed work Oscar Wilde.
• In 1987, Robert Reilly wrote and published "The God Of Mirrors", a novel based on the facts of Wilde's "dazzling life and tragic fate."
• In 1991, cartoonist Dave Sim published Melmoth, a partially fictionalized account of Oscar Wilde's last days, as a part of his graphic epic Cerebus.
• In 1994, Melissa Knox published her psychobiography, Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide. This book explores the ways in which Wilde's literary styles and the events of his life developed in response to his desires, conflicts, and suffering. It offers new biographic information as well as new insights into Wilde as an artist.
• In 1997 Merlin Holland published a book entitled The Wilde Album. This rather small volume contained many pictures and other Wilde memorabilia, much of which had not been published before. It includes 27 pictures taken by the portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony, one of which is at the beginning of this article.
• 1999 saw the publication of Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen written by Robert Tanitch. This book is a comprehensive record of Wilde's life and work as presented on stage and screen from 1880 until 1999. It includes cast lists and snippets of reviews.
• In 2000 Columbia University professor Barbara Belford published the biography, Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius.
• 2003 saw the publication of the first complete account of Wilde's sexual and emotional life in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna (Century/Random House).
• 2003 also saw the publication of the first uncensored transcripts of Wilde's 1895 trial vs. the Marquess of Queensberry. The book contained a 50-page introduction by Merlin Holland, and a foreword by John Mortimer. It was published as Irish Peacock and Scarlett Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in the UK, and as simply The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in some other countries.
• 2005 saw the publication of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, by literary biographer Joseph Pearce. It explores the Catholic sensibility in his art, his interior suffering and dissatisfaction, and his lifelong fascination with the Catholicism, which led to his deathbed embrace of the Church.
• In 2008 Chatto & Windus published Thomas Wright's "Oscar's Books", a biography of Wilde the reader, which explores all aspects of his reading, from his childhood in Dublin to his death in Paris. Wright tracked down many books that formerly belonged in Wilde's Tite Street Library, which was dispersed at the time of his trials; these contain Wilde's marginal notes, which no scholar had previously examined. The book will be published as a Vintage paperback in September 2009.
Biographical films, television series and stage plays
• The play Oscar Wilde (1936), written by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, based on the life of Wilde, included Frank Harris as a character. Starring Robert Morley, the play opened at the Gate Theatre in London in 1936, and two years later was staged in New York where its success launched the career of Morley as a stage actor.
• Two films of his life were released in 1960. The first to be released was Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley and based on the Stokes brothers' play mentioned above. Then came The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch. At the time homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK and both films were rather cagey in touching on the subject without being explicit.
• In 1960, the Irish actor Micheál MacLíammóir began performing a one-man show called The Importance of Being Oscar. The show was heavily influenced by Brechtian theory and contained many poems and samples of Wilde's writing. The play was a success and MacLiammoir toured it with success everywhere he went. It was published in 1963.
• In 1972, director Adrian Hall's and composer Richard Cumming's play Feasting with Panthers, based on Wilde's writings and set in Reading Gaol, premiered at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island.
• In the summer of 1977 Vincent Price began performing the one-man play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joseph Hardy,[1] the premise of the play is that an aging Oscar Wilde, in order to earn some much-needed money, gave a lecture on his life in a Parisian theatre on 28 November 1899 (just a year before his death). The play was a success everywhere it was performed, except for its New York City run. It was revived in 1990 in London with Donald Sinden in the role.
• In 1978 London Weekend Television produced a television series about the life of Lillie Langtry entitled Lillie. In it Peter Egan played Oscar. The bulk of his scenes portrayed their close friendship up to and including their tours of America in 1882. Thereafter, he was in a few more scenes leading up to his trials in 1895.
• Michael Gambon portrayed Wilde on British television in 1985 in the three-part BBC series Oscar concentrating on the trial and prison term.
• 1988 saw Nickolas Grace playing Wilde in Ken Russell's film Salome's Last Dance.
• In 1989 Terry Eagleton premiered his play St. Oscar. Eagleton agrees that only one line in the entire play is taken directly from Wilde, while the rest of the dialogue is his own fancy. The play is also influenced by Brechtian theory.
• Tom Holland's 1988 play (radio version 1990, professional performance 1991) The Importance of Being Frank relates Wilde's trial, imprisonment and exile, using quotation and pastiche of The Importance of Being Earnest.
• In 1994 Jim Bartley published Stephen and Mr. Wilde, a novel about Wilde and his fictional black manservant Stephen set during Wilde's American tour.
• Moises Kaufman's 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde uses real quotes and transcripts of Wilde's three trials.
• Wilde appears as a supporting character in Tom Stoppard's 1997 play The Invention of Love and is referenced extensively in Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties.
• Avoiding the restrictions on the two films from 1960, British actor Stephen Fry portrayed Wilde (whose fan he had been since the age of 13) in the 1997 film Wilde to critical acclaim - a role that he has said he was "born to play". Fry, an acknowledged Wilde scholar, also appeared as Wilde in the short-lived American television series Ned Blessing (1993).
• David Hare's 1998 play The Judas Kiss portrays Wilde as a manly homosexual Christ figure.
• In 1999, Romulus Linney published "Oscar Over Here" which recounts Wilde's lectures in America during the 1880s, specifically in Leadville, CO, as well as his time in prison and a death fantasy which included a conversation with a Jesus Christ figure. The first performance of this work was in New York in 1995.
• The main character in the Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical A Man of No Importance identifies himself with Oscar Wilde, and Wilde appears to him several times.
• Actor/playwright Jade Esteban Estrada portrayed Wilde in the solo musical comedy ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 1 in 2002.
• Oscar: in October 2004, a stage musical by Mike Read about Wilde closed after just one night at the Shaw Theatre in Euston after a severe critical mauling.
• De Profundis in 2004, a theatrical adaptation of Wilde's letter of the same name, was performed by Don Anderson at the Segal Centre for the Arts in Montreal, Quebec. Receiving rave reviews and playing to sold out audiences, the role won Anderson the MECCA, Montreal English Critic's Circle Award, for best actor of 2004.
Works
Main article: Oscar Wilde bibliography
Wilde's first published work was Poems (1881), after which he lectured extensivesly in America and reviewed prolifically in London peroidicals. Intentions, a collection of essays and dialogues outlining his aesthetic theories was published in 1891, a year after his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had been serialised the year before. The children's stories The Happy Prince and other stories (1888), Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and other stories, and House of Pomegrantes (1891) were also published around this time. It was in drama that Wilde made his lasting mark, and in a burst of industry produced his plays, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893). An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were still playing on the London stage in 1895 when his trials began. His correspondence and other works were published posthumously.
The bulk of Wilde's letters, manuscripts, and other material relating to his literary circle are housed at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.[38][39] A number of Wilde's letters and manuscripts can also be found at The British Library, as well as public and private collections throughout Britain, the United States and France.