Oscar Wilde: the story on HearLore

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde could read two facing pages of a book simultaneously, consuming a three-volume novel in half an hour while retaining enough detail to recount the entire plot. This prodigious speed reading ability marked him as a child prodigy at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, where he attended from 1864 to 1871. While his older brother Willie was more popular among his peers, Wilde impressed them with his humorous and inventive school stories. His academic excellence was undeniable, particularly in classics, where he ranked fourth in the school in 1869. He won multiple prizes for his aptitude in giving oral translations of Greek and Latin texts, including the prestigious Carpenter Prize for Greek Testament. He was one of only three students at Portora to win a Royal School scholarship to Trinity College Dublin in 1871. The family moved to No 1 Merrion Square in 1855, creating a unique medical and cultural milieu where guests included Sheridan Le Fanu, Charles Lever, and William Rowan Hamilton. His sister Isola, described by Oscar as a golden ray of sunshine dancing about their home, died at the age of nine of a febrile illness. He wrote the poem Requiescat in her memory, with the first stanza reading: Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. Until he was nine, Wilde was educated at home, where a French nursemaid and a German governess taught him their languages, giving him early fluency in both French and German.

The Aesthetic Revolution

At Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1874 to 1878, Oscar Wilde became a central figure in the emerging Aestheticism movement, a philosophy that prioritized beauty and sensory experience over moral or utilitarian concerns. He wore his hair long, openly scorned manly sports though he occasionally boxed, and decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china, and other objets d'art. He entertained lavishly and once remarked to some friends, I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china. The line spread famously, adopted by aesthetes as a slogan, though critics disdained it as terribly vacuous. When four of his fellow students physically assaulted Wilde, he fended them off single-handedly, surprising his detractors. He was rusticated for one term after returning late to a college term from a trip to Greece with his tutor Professor J. P. Mahaffy. Wilde became well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements, and he petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, raising to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason. He commented he would be awfully sorry to give it up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy. His active involvement in Freemasonry lasted only for the time he spent at Oxford. Catholicism deeply appealed to him, especially its rich liturgy, and he discussed converting to it with clergy several times. In 1877, Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome. He eagerly read the books of Cardinal Newman, a noted Anglican priest who had converted to Catholicism. On the appointed day of his baptism into Catholicism, he sent Father Bowden a bunch of altar lilies instead. He graduated Bachelor of Arts with a double first in 1878, having been placed in the first class in Classical Moderations and then again in the final examination in Literae Humaniores. He wrote to a friend, The dons are beyond words , the Bad Boy doing so well in the end!

When was Oscar Wilde born and when did he die?

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 and died in Paris on the 30th of November 1900 at the age of 46.

What school did Oscar Wilde attend and when did he study there?

Oscar Wilde attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen from 1864 to 1871 and later studied at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1874 to 1878.

When did Oscar Wilde publish The Picture of Dorian Gray?

Oscar Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine and revised it for book publication in 1891.

When was Oscar Wilde arrested and what was the sentence?

Oscar Wilde was arrested for gross indecency on the 6th of April 1895 and was convicted on the 25th of May 1895 to two years of hard labour.

Where was Oscar Wilde imprisoned and when was he released?

Oscar Wilde was incarcerated from the 25th of May 1895 to the 18th of May 1897, spending time in Newgate Prison, Pentonville Prison, Wandsworth Prison, and Reading Gaol.

The American Lecture Tour

In 1882, Oscar Wilde embarked on a lecture tour of North America, originally planned to last four months but continuing for almost a year owing to its commercial success. He journeyed on the SS Arizona, arriving on the 2nd of January 1882, and sought to transpose the beauty he saw in art into daily life. This was a practical as well as philosophical project: in Oxford he had surrounded himself with blue china and lilies, and now one of his lectures was on interior design. He claimed to have drunk whiskey with miners in Leadville, Colorado, and was fêted at the most fashionable salons in many cities he visited. The press reception was hostile, with the Springfield Republican commenting on his behavior during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting his conduct was more a bid for notoriety rather than devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. T. W. Higginson, a cleric and abolitionist, wrote in Unmanly Manhood of his general concern that Wilde, whose only distinction is that he has written a thin volume of very mediocre verse, would improperly influence the behavior of men and women. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the city was divided into two camps, those who thought Wilde was an engaging speaker and an original thinker, and those who thought he was the most pretentious fraud ever perpetrated on a groaning public. When he visited San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, The city is divided into two camps, those who thought Wilde was an engaging speaker and an original thinker, and those who thought he was the most pretentious fraud ever perpetrated on a groaning public. He was the subject of anti-Irish caricature and was portrayed as a monkey, a blackface performer and a Christy's Minstrel throughout his career. Harper's Weekly put a sunflower-worshipping monkey dressed as Wilde on the front of the January 1882 issue. The drawing stimulated other American maligners and, in England, had a full-page reprint in the Lady's Pictorial. When the National Republican discussed Wilde, it was to explain a few items as to the animal's pedigree. And on the 22nd of January 1882, the Washington Post illustrated the Wild Man of Borneo alongside Oscar Wilde of England and asked How far is it from this to this?

The Writer of Decadence

By 1890, Oscar Wilde had found his voice in prose, producing his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was published as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The story begins with an artist painting a picture of Gray. When Gray, who has a face like ivory and rose leaves, sees his finished portrait, he breaks down. Distraught that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful, he inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain in which only the painted image grows old while he stays beautiful and young. Reviewers immediately criticized the novel's decadence and homosexual subtext; the Daily Chronicle, for example, called it unclean, poisonous and heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction. Wilde vigorously responded, writing to the editor of the Scots Observer, in which he clarified his stance on ethics and aesthetics in art. He nevertheless revised it extensively for book publication in 1891: six new chapters were added, some overtly decadent passages and homo-eroticism excised, and a preface was included consisting of twenty-two epigrams, such as Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. Contemporary reviewers and modern critics have postulated numerous possible sources of the story, a search Jershua McCormack argues is futile because Wilde has tapped a root of Western folklore so deep and ubiquitous that the story has escaped its origins and returned to the oral tradition. Wilde claimed the plot was an idea that is as old as the history of literature but to which I have given a new form. Modern critic Robin McKie considered the novel to be technically mediocre, saying that the conceit of the plot had guaranteed its fame, but the device is never pushed to its full. On the other hand, Robert McCrum of The Guardian lists it among the 100 best novels ever written in English, calling it an arresting, and slightly camp, exercise in late-Victorian gothic. The novel has been the subject of many adaptations to film and stage, and one of its most quoted lines, there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about, features in Monty Python's Oscar Wilde sketch in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

The Queensberry Libel

On the 18th of February 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite. Wilde, encouraged by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry for defamatory libel, since the note amounted to a public accusation that Wilde had committed the crime of sodomy. Queensberry was arrested for criminal libel, a charge carrying a possible sentence of up to two years in prison. Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was in fact true, and furthermore that there was some public benefit to having made the accusation openly. Queensberry's lawyers thus hired private detectives to find evidence of Wilde's homosexual liaisons. Wilde's friends had advised him against the prosecution at a Saturday Review meeting at the Café Royal on the 24th of March 1895; Frank Harris warned him that they are going to prove sodomy against you and advised him to flee to France. Wilde and Douglas walked out in a huff, Wilde saying it is at such moments as these that one sees who are one's true friends. The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Taylor and Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of private detectives had directed Queensberry's lawyers, led by Edward Carson QC, to the world of the Victorian underground. Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, cross-dressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses since they too were accomplices to the crimes of which Wilde was accused. The extent of the evidence massed against Wilde forced him to declare meekly, I am the prosecutor in this case. Wilde's barrister, Sir Edward Clarke, opened the case by pre-emptively asking Wilde about two suggestive letters Wilde had written to Douglas, which the defence had in its possession. He characterised the first as a prose sonnet and admitted that the poetical language might seem strange to the court but claimed its intent was innocent. Wilde stated that the letters had been obtained by blackmailers who had attempted to extort money from him, but he had refused, suggesting they should take the £60 unusual for a prose piece of that length. He claimed to regard the letters as works of art rather than something of which to be ashamed. Carson, who was also a Dubliner who had attended Trinity College Dublin, at the same time as Wilde, cross-examined Wilde on how he perceived the moral content of his works. Wilde replied with characteristic wit and flippancy, claiming that works of art are not capable of being moral or immoral but only well or poorly made, and that only brutes and illiterates, whose views on art are incalculably stupid, would make such judgements about art. Carson, a leading barrister, diverged from the normal practice of asking closed questions. Carson pressed Wilde on each topic from every angle, squeezing out nuances of meaning from Wilde's answers, removing them from their aesthetic context and portraying Wilde as evasive and decadent. While Wilde won the most laughs, Carson scored the most legal points. To undermine Wilde's credibility, and to justify Queensberry's description of Wilde as a posing somdomite, Carson drew from the witness an admission of his capacity for posing, by demonstrating that he had lied about his age under oath. Playing on this, he returned to the topic throughout his cross-examination. Carson also tried to justify Queensberry's characterisation by quoting from Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, referring in particular to a scene in the second chapter, in which Lord Henry Wotton explains his decadent philosophy to Dorian, an innocent young man, in Carson's words. Carson then moved to the factual evidence and questioned Wilde about his friendships with lower-class males, some of whom were as young as sixteen when Wilde had met them. Wilde admitted being on a first-name basis and lavishing gifts upon them, but insisted that nothing untoward had occurred and that the men were merely good friends of his. Carson repeatedly pointed out the unusual nature of these relationships and insinuated that the men were prostitutes. Wilde replied that he did not believe in social barriers and simply enjoyed the society of young men. Then Carson asked Wilde directly whether he had ever kissed a certain servant boy, Wilde responded, Oh, dear no. He was a particularly plain boy , unfortunately ugly , I pitied him for it. Carson pressed him on the answer, repeatedly asking why the boy's ugliness was relevant. Wilde hesitated, then for the first time became flustered: You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously. In his opening speech for the defence, Carson announced that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. On the advice of his lawyers, Wilde dropped the prosecution. Queensberry was found not guilty, as the court declared that his accusation that Wilde was posing as a Somdomite was justified, true in substance and in fact. Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defence, which left Wilde bankrupt.

The Hard Labour Sentence

After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. Robbie Ross found Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, Via Pont Street, Knightsbridge, with Reginald Turner. Both men advised Wilde to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France; his mother advised him to stay and fight. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, The train has gone. It's too late. On the 6th of April 1895, Wilde was arrested for gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term meaning homosexual acts not amounting to buggery an offence under a separate statute. At Wilde's instruction, Ross and Wilde's butler forced their way into the bedroom and library of 16 Tite Street, packing some personal effects, manuscripts and letters, so they would not be sequestered by the police. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway, where he received daily visits from Douglas. Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on the 26th of April 1895, before Mr Justice Charles. Wilde pleaded not guilty. He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to give evidence; he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde in France. Fearing persecution, Ross and many others also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross-examination, Wilde was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently: This response was counter-productive in a legal sense, for it only served to reinforce the charges of homosexual behaviour. The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, was finally able to get a magistrate to allow Wilde and his friends to post bail. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 surety required by the court, having disagreed with Wilde's treatment by the press and the courts. Wilde was freed from Holloway and, shunning attention, went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of his firm friends. Edward Carson approached Sir Frank Lockwood QC, the Solicitor General, and asked: Can we not let up on the fellow now? Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicised to be dropped. The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On the 25th of May 1895, Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge described the sentence, the maximum allowed, as totally inadequate for a case such as this, and that the case was the worst case I have ever tried. Wilde's response of And I? May I say nothing, my Lord? was drowned out in cries of Shame in the courtroom. Although it is widely believed that the charges were related to Wilde's consensual activities, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, which includes an original transcript of the libel trial which came to light in 2000, suggests that he took advantage of teenagers. Antony Edmonds feels that Wilde would have faced prosecution today: For example, he certainly paid for sex with youths under the age of 18 which is a criminal offence. But even if his activities had led only to exposure and not to arrest, he would have been savagely pilloried in the media. Wilde was 39 when he seduced Alphonse Conway, and Conway was an inexperienced boy of 16. Another teenager who said he had engaged in sex acts with Wilde, Walter Grainger, who was 16 at the time, said Wilde had threatened him with very serious trouble if he told anyone about their relationship. Marriageable age and the age of consent in England was 16 at the time, having been 13 as recently as 1885: the Offences against the Person Act 1875 raised the age of consent to 13 years old, and a decade later, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent to 16 years old, just ten years before the trial.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Having been convicted in one of the first celebrity trials, Oscar Wilde was incarcerated from the 25th of May 1895 to the 18th of May 1897. He first entered Newgate Prison in London for processing, then was moved to Pentonville Prison, where the hard labour to which he had sentenced consisted of many hours of walking a treadmill and picking oakum separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes, and where prisoners were allowed to read only the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress. A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison in London. Inmates there also followed the regimen of hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed, which wore harshly on Wilde's delicate health. In November, he collapsed during chapel from illness and hunger. His right ear drum was ruptured in the fall, an injury that later contributed to his death. He spent two months in the infirmary. Richard B. Haldane, the Liberal MP and reformer, visited Wilde and had him transferred in November to Reading Gaol, west of London on the 23rd of November 1895. The transfer itself was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him on the platform at Clapham Junction railway station. In 2019 a rainbow plaque was unveiled at the station recalling this event. He spent the remainder of his sentence at Reading, addressed and identified only as C.3.3 , the occupant of the third cell on the third floor of C ward. About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, witnessed the harsh conditions. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. The poem was published in 1898 and remains one of his most powerful works, reflecting the suffering and dehumanization he experienced during his two years of hard labour. He died in Paris on the 30th of November 1900, at the age of 46, leaving behind a legacy that would eventually be recognized as one of the greatest in English literature.