Oscar Wilde

Who is Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (born 16 October
1854 in Dublin, Ireland) was an Irish writer, poet and
playwright.
(Wilde is considered one of the most prominent
playwrights of late Victorian London; in addition, he was
a celebrity of the time because of his great and sharpened
wit.)
He was educated at home until the age of nine,
demonstrating remarkable intelligence and a particular
facility for French and German. Thanks to a grant of 95 £
annual, the 17 of October of 1874 he entered Magdalen
College, Oxford, where he continued his studies until
1878.

Wilde was deeply influenced by writers John Ruskin and

Walter Pater, who advocated the central importance of art
in life.
(Wilde himself reflected on this point of view when in The
Picture of Dorian Gray he wrote that «All art is rather
useless». Indeed, this quote reflects Wilde’s support for
the basic principle of the aesthetic movement: art for art.)
On the political plane, Wilde supported a kind of
libertarian socialism and philosophical anarchism, and
expounded his ideas in the text "The soul of man under
socialism".
(He was a celebrity of the time because of his wit and the
level of provocation he used, not only in his works, but
also in his walk: he dressed extravagantly and spared no
intelligent monologues in every conversation he had.)

Most important works

(Among Oscar’s most important works are :)
 The Picture of Dorian Gray
 The Happy Prince
 The Canterville Ghost
 The Selfish Giant
 The Importance Of Being Earnest
 De Profundis
 The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Imprisonment
(In 1895, at the peak of his career, the poet shocked the
British middle class at the time.)
Oscar Wilde was a friend of Lord Alfred Douglas, an
English writer and poet. His father suspected the two of
them of having an affair. He therefore decided to send him
a letter:
"For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite
John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry"
Wilde, encouraged by the complainant’s son, denounced
him for slander and wielded the amorality of art as a
defense.
(Finally, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry was released
and Wilde faced a second trial in May 1895, in which he
was charged with "sodomy and serious indecency", and
sentenced to two years' hard labour.)
(Left prison in May 1897.)

Death
Wilde and Douglas lived together for a few months at
the end of 1897, near Naples, until the threat from
their respective families to cut off their funds
eventually separated them. Wilde spent the rest of his
life in Paris, where he lived under the false name of
Sebastian Melmoth. There, and at the hand of an Irish
priest from the church of Saint Joseph, he would have
converted to Catholicism, a faith in which he
supposedly died.

sentence
(To conclude, I leave the following sentence)
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts
are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.”