Oscar Wilde
By: Ashleigh Carroll
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Oscar Wilde's Biography
In 1854 Wilde was born in Dublin. Son of Sir William Wilde, founder of the first eye and ear hospital in Great Britain, and Jane Francesca Elgee Wilde, a writer. Wilde was in the Victorian Age where most that couldn't attend school and learn the arts began to do so. Wilde attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen in 1864, Trinity College, Dublin in 1871, and Magdalen College, Oxford in1874-1879. Entering Oxford was a time of conflict for him, conflict between the philosophies of Ruskin and Pater, between Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry, and between heterosexuality and homosexuality. He distinguishes himself for scholarship; also for dressing and acting eccentrically.
After
attending school he wrote Ravenna and won Newdigate Prize for his poem and lecture toured the United States a year later in 1882. In 1883 Wilde created Vera; Or the Nihilists which was first produced in New York and in 1883-1884 he wrote his second unsuccessful play, The Duchess of Padua. In 1884 Wilde marries Constance Lloyd the daughter of a Dublin barrister and a woman with financial resources. Takes a house in Chelsea, an artistic section of London. Makes and builds friendships with fellow artists.
After publishing several successful poems and meeting many amazing poets, Wilde goes to prison for indecency. In prison, he writes De Profundis, a moving description of his spiritual progress to religious insight; it will be published in part in 1905 and in full in 1962. On his release from prison, he goes in exile to the Continent, where he lives under an alias, Sebastian Melmoth. In 1989 Wilde publishes his best known poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, he also publishes two letters on prison reform, then his wife dies. In 1900 after being baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, Wilde dies of cerebral meningitis at the Hotel D'Alsace. Wilde is buried at Bagneaux.