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Oscar Wilde is born
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde is born October 16th 1854, in the capital city of Ireland, Dublin. Wilde was born of professional and literary parents. His father, Sir William Wilde, was Ireland’s leading ear and eye surgeon, who also published books on archaeology, folklore, and the satirist Jonathan Swift. His mother, who wrote under the name Speranza, was a revolutionary poet and an authority on Celtic myth and folklore. -
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School
Oscar Wilde attends Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ireland from 1864 to 1871. -
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Trinity College
Oscar Wilde went on a scholarships to Trinity College in Dublin from 1871 to 1874 -
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Magdalen College
Oscar Wilde goes on a sholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford from 1874 to 1878, which awarded him a degree with honours. During these four years, he distinguished himself not only as a Classical scholar but also a poseur and a wit. -
Newdigate Prize
In 1878, the young poet won the Newdigate Prize with a long poem, named Ravenna. -
"Poems"
Wilde published Poems (1881), which echoed, too faithfully, his discipleship to the poets Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Keats. -
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USA and Canada
Wilde agreed to lecture in the United States and Canada in 1882, and then returned to the UK in 1883. -
Marriage
In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd, daughter of a prominent Irish barrister -
First son is born
In 1885, Oscar's and Constance's first son, Cyril was born. -
Daughter is born
In 1886, their second child, Vyvyan, was born. -
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Editor of Woman's World
From 1887 to 1889, Wilde was a reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette and then became editor of Woman’s World. -
"The Happy Prince and Other Tales"
During this period of apprenticeship as a writer, he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), which reveals his gift for romantic allegory in the form of the fairy tale. -
“The Decay of Lying”
Wilde writes his essay “The Decay of Lying” where he was himself, approximating the pattern in his reckless pursuit of pleasure. -
"The Picture of Dorian Gray"
In 1890, he published, The Picture of Dorian Gray (published in Lippincott’s Magazine, 1890, and in book form, revised and expanded by six chapters, 1891). -
"Intentions"
A year later, he published Intentions (1891), which consisted of previously published essays, -
Lord Alfred Douglas
Oscar Wilde meets Lord Alfred Douglas in 1891, which infuriates the marquess of Queensberry, Douglas’s father. -
"Lady Windermere’s Fan"
He got his first success with Lady Windermere’s Fan, one of his social comedies where he used his paradoxical, epigrammatic wit to create a form of comedy new to the 19th-century English theatre. -
"Salomé"
His macabre play Salomé, written in French and designed, as he said, to make his audience shudder by its depiction of unnatural passion, was also published in 1893, and an English translation appeared in 1894 with Aubrey Beardsley’s celebrated illustrations. -
"A Woman of No Importance"
A second society comedy, A Woman of No Importance (produced 1893), convinced the critic William Archer that Wilde’s plays “must be taken on the very highest plane of modern English drama.” -
"An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Earnest"
An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, some of Wilde's last plays were produced early in 1895. -
Wilde is accused and sentenced
He is accused of being a sodomite. Wilde, urged by Douglas, sued for criminal libel. Wilde’s case collapsed, however, when the evidence went against him, and he dropped the suit. Urged to flee to France by his friends, Wilde refused, unable to believe that his world was at an end. He was arrested and ordered to stand trial.
Wilde testified brilliantly, but the jury failed to reach a verdict. In the retrial he was found guilty and sentenced, in May 1895, to two years at hard labour. -
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Time in prison
Most of his sentence was served at Reading Gaol, where he wrote a long letter to Douglas (published in 1905 in a drastically cut version as De Profundis) filled with recriminations against the younger man for encouraging him in dissipation and distracting him from his work.
In May 1897 Wilde was released, a bankrupt, and immediately went to France, hoping to regenerate himself as a writer. -
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol"
He writes his last piece of work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol which revealed his concern for inhumane prison conditions. -
Death
He died suddenly of acute meningitis brought on by an ear infection at 46 years of age, in Paris, France. In his semiconscious final moments, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, which he had long admired.
