Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.

Oscar Wilde (play)

The play Oscar Wilde, written by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, is based on the life of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in which Wilde's friend, the controversial author and journalist Frank Harris, appears as a character. The play, which contains much of Wilde's actual writings, starts with Wilde's literary success and his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, turns into a courtroom melodrama, and ends with Wilde as a broken alcoholic after two years in prison.

Owing to the play's subject matter it was never granted a licence by the Lord Chamberlain and could, therefore, only be staged in England at a theatre club where membership was required. The play's first production at London's Gate Theatre Studio in 1936, starred Robert Morley as Wilde and was produced by Norman Marshall. Opening on 29 September, the play ran for six weeks and proved to be one of the theatre's most successful productions.

Later in New York in 1938, again with Morley in the title role, the play became a major award-winning success on Broadway at the Fulton Theatre where it opened on 10 October and ran for 247 performances. This success launched Robert Morley's career as a stage actor on both sides of the Atlantic.

Oscar Wilde (disambiguation)

Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories.

Oscar Wilde may also refer to:

See also