In , he married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of a well-known Irish barrister; together, the couple had two boys, Cyril and Vyvyan. It looked like an ideal family, at least to observers. In their mythic simplicity, and delicate balance between joy and sadness, they are among the best things Wilde ever wrote.
He also achieved success with published versions of his essays. Dorian Gray tells the fantastical story of a beautiful young man who buys eternal youth and pays for it with his soul. Desperate not to lose his youthful beauty, Dorian makes a wish that a painted portrait of him will grow old, while he himself stays young — he finds that this is exactly what happens.
Despite embarking on a life of non-stop debauchery and hedonism, exploring every vice available to him and even resorting to murder, Dorian looks as beautiful as ever, while the portrait becomes hideously deformed.
Nodding both to the ghoulish traditions of the Gothic novel and also myths such as that of Faust, who made a pact with the devil to gain eternal knowledge, Dorian Gray shocked many readers.
From a contemporary perspective, what is most striking about the book is how little its gay themes are concealed, particularly given the anxious moral standards of the time. Wilde still had ambitions to become a dramatist. At around the same time as Dorian Gray appeared, he was finally persuaded to try his hand at writing a society comedy inspired by contemporary French drama, where plots full of social intrigues and unlikely twists were all the rage. It was the dramatic success Wilde had long craved.
The plays that followed made Wilde one of the most renowned playwrights of the age. A Woman of No Importance focuses on a woman who was abandoned by her high-society lover when she became pregnant, satirising class and sexual double standards in Victorian England.
Despite their intricate plots and witty dialogue few are better than Oscar Wilde at deploying scintillating one-liners the plays have a seriousness that belies their comedy. Originally written in French, the play relates the Bible story of a dancer who falls in love with John the Baptist, only to be rejected by him. A published version appeared in , with sensuous illustrations by the renowned artist Aubrey Beardsley. In February , less than a month after the debut of An Ideal Husband , The Importance of Being Earnest , the play many now regard as his masterwork, opened in London.
That is their tragedy. No man does. But it is also superlatively plotted, a madcap tale of mistaken identities and apparently doomed romance that rivals anything written by Shakespeare or the 18th-century playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan for ingenuity. Despite being one of the funniest comedies ever composed in English, it also says profound things about human identity. It has been called the second most known and quoted play after Hamlet. Creatively, the early s were a remarkable period for Wilde, but clouds were gathering.
His marriage was under pressure, and in he met and began a sexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, a young and startingly good-looking aristocrat. Wilde sued him for libel — a risky decision that resulted in a court case. Wilde found the experience crushing, particularly when he was sent to Reading jail, west of London, where conditions were poor and he was physically attacked by other inmates. He struggled to adapt, and was declared bankrupt, meaning that Constance and the children — she refused to divorce her husband — lost their house and nearly all their possessions.
Wilde was eventually released in In , he published The Ballad of Reading Gaol , a sombre, halting poem that glances wistfully at what might have been. He married Constance Lloyd in and they had two sons, but in Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed 'Bosie'.
In April , Wilde sued Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, for libel, after the Marquis has accused him of being homosexual. Wilde lost and, after details of his private life were revealed during the trial, was arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years of hard labour. While in prison he composed a long letter to Douglas, posthumously published under the title 'De Profundis'. His wife took their children to Switzerland and adopted the name 'Holland'. Wilde was released with his health irrevocably damaged and his reputation ruined.
He died in Paris on 30 November At Oxford, he began to write reviews of London art exhibits. In he wrote his first play, Vera , though it was not performed. The following year, he published his collected poems at his own expense.
They elicited a somewhat hostile reaction from critics, but they had popular appeal and went into five editions. Interest in Wilde spread across the ocean to America.
Miss Mary Anderson, a New York actress, asked him to write a play for her. He began a five-act tragedy that developed into The Duchess of Padua. Soon after, he was invited to come to America himself to lecture on aesthetics. On his arrival he told the customs agent: "I have nothing to declare but my genius. When Wilde returned from America he went to Paris. Read more: London's literary history. Wilde attracted attention from the ladies wherever he went, and often returned the favour.
He fell for a girl for the first time when he met Florence Balcombe and gave her a cross inscribed with his name. He also did a delicate pencil sketch of her, showing a sweet, wistful look. Florence later married Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Wilde was later smitten with the actress Lillie Langtry. The two made their home in Chelsea at No. Wilde took a job as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette. He had little money but quite a reputation as a conversationalist. Their first son, Cyril, was born in , followed the next year by another, Vyvyan.
Wilde adored his children and spent hours playing with them. He seemed poised to consummate a perfectly respectable, if somewhat flamboyant, career. But two pivotal events set his life on a different course. First, he wrote the now-classic book, The Picture of Dorian Gray , a story about a beautiful man who stays young while his portrait grows old and ugly. The press was almost unanimous in their condemnation of the book, considering it prurient, immoral, vicious, coarse, and crude.
Unconcerned, Wilde commented, "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well-written or badly written. That is all. Also during this time, he met someone who forever changed his life, and who had the beauty of Dorian Gray, Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, or Bosie, the third son of the 8th Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde was drawn to Bosie for several reasons. He was from an aristocratic family, good looking, young, and showed promise as a poet of sonnets.
Some biographers think Bosie may have reminded Wilde of Isola. Wilde's relationship with Bosie put him in dangerous territory since all homosexual acts were illegal in England at that time. Wilde's next several works were well received, and the controversy of Dorian Gray receded.
His play Lady Windemere's Fan opened at the St. James Theatre to a rousing reception. When the audience shouted 'Author! I congratulate you on the great success of your performance, which persuades me that you think almost as highly of the play as I do.
His wit poked fun at the hierarchies of society and aimed to remove the masks of the upper crust. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and with audience, with the whole theatre.
Read more: Was Mary Tudor really England's most hated queen? But Bosie's father had a different opinion of Wilde and was furious at the praise heaped on him. He left his card, and wrote: "To Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite. Wilde took it very seriously and told a friend: "Bosie's father has left a card at my club with hideous words on it. I don't see anything now but a criminal prosecution.
My whole life seems ruined by this man
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