Timeline
Title
Country/Nationality
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, the early 1890s saw him become one of the most popular playwrights in London. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts, imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46.
Wilde's life has been the subject of numerous biographies since his death. The earliest were memoirs by those who knew him: often they are personal or impressionistic accounts which can be good character sketches, but are sometimes factually unreliable.
Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the disease.
Books by Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. Wilde later revised this edition, making several alt...
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” and has proved immensely popular since its first performance in 1895. The play certainly has its farcical and comic elements, such as the witty banter e...
Reviews
Wilde’s literary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof against any exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferred to forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove of unusual interest; some of the...
The Canterville Ghost
"The Canterville Ghost" is a humorous short story by Oscar Wilde. It was the first of Wilde's stories to be published, appearing in two parts in The Court and Society Review, 23 February and 2 March 1887. The story is about an American family who mo...
An Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband is an 1895 stage play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. The action is set in London, in "the present", and takes place over the course of t...
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
The Happy Prince and Other Tales (sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Stories) is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "...
Lady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is having an...
The Fisherman and his Soul
To get what we want is often the greatest curse of all. The fisherman here accidentally catches a mermaid in his net. He falls in love with the Mermaid and tells her that he wants to marry her. She tells him that he can only marry her if he sends awa...
De Profundis
De Profundis (Latin: "from the depths") is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie" (Lord Alfred Douglas). In its first half, Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which event...
The Duchess of Padua
The Duchess of Padua is a play by Oscar Wilde. It is a five-act tragedy set in Padua and written in blank verse. It was written for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first per...
Salome
Salome is a one-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde. The original 1891 version of the play was in French; an English translation was published three years later. The play depicts the attempted seduction of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) by Salome, step-daughter...
Vera; or the Nihilists
Vera; or, The Nihilists is a play by Oscar Wilde. It is a tragedy set in Russia and is loosely based on the life of Vera Zasulich. It was Wilde's first play, and the first to be performed. A draft of the script was completed in 1880 and the following...
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
This poem is mainly based on an execution that took place while he was in the prison. Making it the center of theme, Wild goes on to expose the dire conditions of prison life, the despair of its inmates, the degradation, and the shame that he persona...
The Soul of Man
The Soul of a Man is a 2003 documentary film, directed by Wim Wenders, as the second instalment of the documentary film series The Blues, produced by Martin Scorsese. The film explores the musical careers of blues musicians Skip James, Blind Willie J...
A Florentine Tragedy and La Sainte Courtisane
Two short fragments: an unfinished and a lost play. A Florentine Tragedy, left in a taxi (not a handbag), is Wilde’s most successful attempt at tragedy – intense and domestic, with surprising depth of characterisation. It was adapted into an opera by...
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
The story is about an attempt to uncover the identity of Mr. W. H., the enigmatic dedicatee of Shakespeare's Sonnets. It is based on a theory, originated by Thomas Tyrwhitt, that the sonnets were addressed to one Willie Hughes, portrayed in the story...
El crimen de Lord Arturo Savile
¡Sumérgete en el intrigante mundo de Lord Arturo Savile, donde una profecía oscura amenaza con cambiar su destino para siempre! En "El crimen de Lord Arturo Savile" de Oscar Wilde, una misteriosa adivina predice que el joven aristócrata está destinad...