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A collection of BBC productions of the major works of Oscar Wilde, plus letters and poetry
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin,
the son of Irish eye surgeon Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca
Elgee, a literary hostess and writer known as 'Speranza'. He
studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford,
where he was an exceptional classical scholar.
It was at Oxford that he first cultivated his flamboyant
aestheticism, proclaiming himself a disciple of the Renaissance
scholar Walter Pater whom he described as 'the holy writ of
beauty'. He disdained athletics, spending his time, instead,
writing poetry and collecting blue china and peacock's feathers. In
1878, he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem 'Ravenna'.
On the strength of his extravagant image and publication of his
first volume of poetry (Poems, 1882), he went on a lecture tour of
the United States. When asked if he had anything to declare by a US
Customs officer, he is reported to have said 'Only my genius'. In
1883, he attended the first night of his play Vera in New York
City. It was unsuccessful.
Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and tried to establish
himself as a writer, as he had not managed to gain an Oxford
fellowship. He had little initial success, but gradually with the
publication of three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince
(1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of
Pomegranates (1891) as well as his only novel The Picture of Dorian
Gray, his reputation grew.
He reached the apex of popular success with his society comedies
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An
Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
which were all performed on the West End stage. Salome (1894) was
written in French and translated into English by Lord Alfred
Douglas but was denied a license and was first performed in Paris
in 1896.
Wilde met Lord Douglas in 1891 and fell passionately in love with
him. In 1895, he filed a lawsuit against Douglas' father, the
Marquess of Queensberry, for publicly insulting him and accusing
him of 'posing as a Somdomite' (sic). Despite his eloquent
testimony, Wilde could not deny his homosexuality and was sentenced
to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. He was
declared bankrupt and, feeling abandoned by Douglas, wrote him a
letter of bitter reproach which was published posthumously as De
Profundis (1905).
Wilde was released in 1897 and moved to France where he wrote The
Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). He died in Paris in 1900 and is
buried in the Cimeti re du P re-Lachaise.
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