'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life'
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He
went to Trinity College, Dublin and then to Magdalen College,
Oxford, where he began to propagandize the new Aesthetic (or 'Art
for Art's Sake') Movement.
Despite winning a first and the Newdigate Prize for Poetry, Wilde
failed to obtain an Oxford scholarship, and was forced to earn a
living by lecturing and writing for periodicals. After his marriage
to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he tried to establish himself as a
writer, but with little initial success. However, his three volumes
of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's
Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his
only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a
reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation
confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his Society
Comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An
Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, all performed on
the West End stage between 1892 and 1895.
Success, however, was short-lived. In 1891 Wilde had met and fallen
extravagantly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1895, when his
success as a dramatist was at its height, Wilde brought an
unsuccessful libel action against Douglas's father, the Marquess of
Queensberry. Wilde lost the case and two trials later was sentenced
to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. As a result
of this experience he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He was
released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate
self-imposed exile on the Continent. He died in Paris in ignominy
in 1900.
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
