Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Dublin, the second son of Sir William Wilde, a distinguished surgeon and antiquarian, and Jane Francesca Elgee, a nationalist poet who wrote under the name “Speranza.” Both parents were formidable intellects — his father was one of the leading eye and ear surgeons in Europe; his mother’s salon was the most important in Dublin literary society — and Wilde inherited from them a combination of intellectual brilliance, social ambition, and theatrical self-presentation that would define his career.

Life and Career

Wilde was educated at Portora Royal School, Trinity College Dublin (where he studied classics under J.P. Mahaffy and won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek), and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874–1878), where he took a First in Literae Humaniores and fell under the influence of Walter Pater and John Ruskin — the two aesthetic philosophers who shaped his thought. At Oxford he began cultivating the persona that would make him famous: the aesthete, the dandy, the conversationalist whose wit could demolish a reputation or illuminate an idea with equal facility.

After Oxford, Wilde settled in London and built a career as a lecturer, journalist, and public personality. His American lecture tour of 1882 — during which he told customs officials, “I have nothing to declare except my genius” — made him internationally known. His fairy tales (The Happy Prince and Other Tales, 1888; A House of Pomegranates, 1891) and his critical dialogues (Intentions, 1891) established his literary reputation. The Picture of Dorian Gray was published first in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (1890) and then in expanded book form (Ward, Lock, 1891), provoking a scandal that foreshadowed his later prosecution.

The great period was 1892–1895: four society comedies — Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) — established Wilde as the most successful playwright in the English-speaking world. The comedies are simultaneously witty entertainments and serious explorations of hypocrisy, sexual morality, and the relationship between art and life. The Importance of Being Earnest, which Wilde called “a trivial comedy for serious people,” is the most perfect comedy in the English language.

The catastrophe came swiftly. Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (“Bosie”) provoked Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, to leave a card at Wilde’s club accusing him of “posing as a Somdomite” [sic]. Wilde, fatally, sued for criminal libel. The libel case collapsed; Wilde was arrested, tried, and convicted of gross indecency; he was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. De Profundis, his long letter to Douglas written in Reading Gaol, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), his final major poem, are the literary monuments of his imprisonment.

Released in May 1897, Wilde left England for France, living in exile under the name “Sebastian Melmoth” (after Maturin’s Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer, by a distant ancestor). He wrote little, drank heavily, and died of cerebral meningitis in a Paris hotel on 30 November 1900. He was forty-six. His tomb in Père Lachaise, designed by Jacob Epstein, is now a literary pilgrimage site.

Major Works and Themes

Wilde’s work is animated by a series of paradoxes that he cultivated deliberately: the relationship between surface and depth, mask and identity, art and morality, pleasure and punishment. He was at once the supreme entertainer and a serious thinker about aesthetics — his critical writings anticipate much of twentieth-century literary theory.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) is his only novel: a young man of extraordinary beauty trades his soul for eternal youth while his portrait ages and records his sins. The novel draws on the Faustian bargain, the Gothic tradition, and Pater’s aestheticism, and its treatment of beauty, corruption, and hidden vice made it both a succès de scandale and a permanent landmark of English fiction.

The society comedies — particularly The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) — are masterpieces of wit and structural ingenuity. The dialogue is the most quotable in English drama since Shakespeare; the plots are intricate mechanisms of concealment and revelation. Earnest’s famous cucumber sandwiches, its “handbag” scene, and its exploration of the relationship between truth and fiction are permanently embedded in the culture.

De Profundis (written 1897, published in full 1962) is Wilde’s most personal work: a 50,000-word letter to Douglas that moves between rage, self-pity, and genuine spiritual reflection. It is the document of a mind rebuilding itself after destruction.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Wilde was one of the most famous people in the world during his lifetime — and the most notorious after his trial. His reputation underwent a long rehabilitation in the twentieth century, driven first by the plays (which never left the repertoire) and then by the reassessment of his criticism, fiction, and the implications of his martyrdom for gay rights.

Today Wilde’s canonical status is secure. He is the most quoted writer in the English language after Shakespeare. His influence extends across literature, theatre, film, fashion, and queer culture. Richard Ellmann’s biography (1987) is one of the great literary biographies of the century.

Key Works

• Poems (1881)
• The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890 magazine; 1891 book)
• Intentions (1891)
• Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893)
• A Woman of No Importance (1894)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1899)
• An Ideal Husband (1899)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
• De Profundis (1905 abridged; 1962 complete)

Collecting Wilde

Wilde is a blue-chip collecting author whose works span the Victorian and Aesthetic eras. The market is deep, international, and driven by both literary collectors and the broader Wilde cult — he remains one of the most famous figures in world literature, and demand for his first editions, manuscripts, and autograph material is consistently strong.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891, Ward, Lock and Company) is the most sought-after Wilde first edition. The book form (not the earlier Lippincott’s magazine appearance) is bound in grey cloth with gilt lettering. Fine copies are uncommon — the binding was not robust — and can command $10,000–$30,000. The earlier magazine version (Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, July 1890) is also collected, though the text differs substantially from the expanded book edition.

The plays are collected in their first published book editions: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893, Elkin Mathews and John Lane), A Woman of No Importance (1894), An Ideal Husband (1899), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1899) were all published by Leonard Smithers or by Methuen. Fine copies of Earnest in the original wrappers bring $3,000–$10,000.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898, Smithers) was published anonymously as by “C.3.3.” (Wilde’s prison number) in an edition of 800 copies on handmade paper and 30 copies on Japanese vellum. The vellum copies are among the most prized Wilde items; copies on handmade paper in the original wrappers bring $2,000–$6,000.

Poems (1881), Wilde’s first book, was published in a small edition by David Bogue. Copies in the original white vellum binding are rare and sought after at $3,000–$8,000.

Signed Wilde material is uncommon but not impossibly rare. He was a prolific correspondent and a social creature who inscribed presentation copies to friends and fellow writers. Autograph letters surface regularly; prices range from $2,000 for routine social notes to $10,000 and above for letters of significant literary or biographical content. Inscribed books are highly prized — presentation copies to Whistler, Pater, Bernhardt, or other prominent contemporaries are museum-quality items.