2. • Born: October 16, 1854 in
Dublin, Ireland.
• Died: November 30, 1900 in
Paris, France of meningitis.
• PARENTS:
-Father: William Wilde .
Acclaimed doctor who
founded St. Mark’s Ophthalmic
Hospital to treat the city’s poor.
-Mother: Jane Francesca
Elgee. Poet who was
associated with the Young
Irelander Rebellion of 1848,
skilled linguist who acclaimed
English translation of Wilhelm
Meinhold’s Sidonia the
Sorceress, which has a big
influence on Wilde’s writing.
Wilhelm Meinhold
St. Mark’s Ophthalmic Hospital
3. Education:
• Portora Royal School at Enniskillen, Ireland, where he fell in love
with Greek and Roman studies.
• Trinity College, Dublin. In 1874, Wilde received the Berkeley
Gold Medal as Trinity’s best student in Greek.
• Magdalen College in Oxford. There he attempted doing
creative writing for the first time. In 1878, his poem “Ravenna”
won the Newdigate Prize for the best English verse composition
at Oxford.
4. Personal Life and Prison Sentence:
• On 1884, Wilde married a wealthy
English woman named Constance
Lloyd and had two children named
Cyril and Vyvyan.
• While Wilde was having his greatest
literary success, he commenced an
affair with a young man named Lord
Marquis of Queensberry. Douglas’s
father discovered the affair and sent
a threatening letter to Wilde. Wilde
sued him, but he lost the trial and
went to jail for two years.
• He got out of prison in 1897 and went
to France to look for exile.
Constance
Lloyd with
one of her
children.
Lord Marquis of Queensberry
with Oscar Wilde
5. Best Works:
• Beginning in 1888, Wilde entered
into a seven-year period of great
creativity.
• He wrote journals, short
stories, poems, plays (especially
comical plays) and children’s
stories.
• His most famous works:
-NOVEL: The Picture of Dorian
Gray, his first and only novel.
-PLAY: The Importance of Being
Earnest
Influenced: Influenced Jorge Luis
Borges, James Joyce, Samuel
Beckett, Paul Merton, James
Morrow, Enchi Fumiko, Erico
Verissimo, Igor Severyanin, Irene
Nemirovsky, Andre Gide, Max
Beerbehm, Stephen
Fry, Lawrence, Camille Paalia, Dave
Sim, Mateiu Caragiale, Tom
Stoppard, Saki, Amanda Filipacchi
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Importance of Being Earnest
6. Legacy:
• Wilde died of meningitis on
November 3, 1990 at the age of 46.
• His works are considered some of the
many masterpieces of the late
Victorian period.
• Influenced:
Jorge Luis Borges, James
Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Paul
Merton, James Morrow, Enchi
Fumiko, Erico Verissimo, Igor
Severyanin, Irene Nemirovsky, Andre
Gide, Max Beerbehm, Stephen
Fry, Lawrence, Camille Paalia, Dave
Sim, Mateiu Caragiale, Tom
Stoppard, Saki, Amanda Filipacchi
, Benjamin Trucker and Renzo.
• Influences: Plato, Aristotle, William
Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, French
and Greek literature, John Pentland
Mahatfy, Dante, The ophile
Gauctier, and Joris-Karl Huysmans.
Statues of Oscar Wilde in Merrior
Square, Dublin.
7. Famous Quotes:
• “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood”
Pg.189
• “At twilight, nature is not without loveliness though perhaps
its chief use is to illustrate quotation from the poets.”
• “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the
stars”
