Oscar Wilde

Playwright, Author

1854 – 1900

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Who was Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel, his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.

Famous Quotes:

  • I am not young enough to know everything.
  • Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
  • Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
  • There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
  • Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
  • It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.
  • It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
  • They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
  • When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
  • The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

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Born
Oct 16, 1854
Dublin
Also known as
  • Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
  • Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
  • Oscar Wilde
  • Wilde Oscar
  • Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
  • Sebastian Melmoth
  • Oskar Uayld
  • Wills Wilde
  • O.FO.F.W.W.
  • C.3.3.
Parents
Siblings
Spouses
Children
Religion
  • Catholicism
Ethnicity
  • Irish people
Nationality
  • Republic of Ireland
Profession
Education
  • Magdalen College, Oxford
    Literae Humaniores
    (1874 - 1878)
  • Trinity College, Dublin
    Classics
    (1871 - 1874)
  • Portora Royal School
  • University of Oxford
Lived in
  • County Dublin
  • Reading Gaol
    ( - 1897/05/19)
Died
Nov 30, 1900
Paris
Resting place
Cimetière parisien de Bagneux

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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"Oscar Wilde." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/oscar_wilde>.

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