IRELAND - FAMOUS PEOPLE

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's real name was Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills. He was a British writer of Irish origins.

He was born on October 16^th, 1854 in Dublin, and died on the 30^th of November 1900 in Paris at the age of 46 years old.
He was born in the Protestant bourgeoisie of Dublin, his father was a renowned ophthalmologist and his mother was a poet. He was the second of three children of Jane Francesca Elgee Wilde and two years younger than his brother William Elder.
His father was a doctor, he treated famous persons including Queen Victoria, Napoleon III and the Swedish King Oscar II.

His mother would have prefered a girl and she raised Oscar as such until the age of 7 years old. His mother often transformed him into a small Hindu idol until the age of nine. He was educated at home under the care of a French and a German governess.

Oscar Wilde had a brilliant school career.

He integrated the Magdalene College, Oxford University, where he built an esthete and dandy character under the influence of the Preraphaelites and he was influenced by theories of art by Walter Pater and John Ruskin Wistler .

Oscar Wilde was arrested in his room of the Cadogan Hotel London palace because he had a homosexual love life, and after two trials, he was sentenced, under a law dating back to 1885 prohibiting homosexuality, to a maximum penalty of two years of hard labor in 1895 in the Reading prison. His wife and son took refuge in Switzerland where she underwent humiliation in Neufchatel on June 1895 as a hotel owner refused to accept her because of her outrageous name.

He wrote several masterpieces such as:

A Woman of No Importance (1894)

It deals with the English upper class, and has been played many times in the theaters in Europe and North America since the death of Wilde.The story is set in an English country house with a woman named Lady Hunstanton. She invited some friends to her place, she then meets again Lord lllingworth, her former lover, who is the father of her son Gérald. This relationship was 20 years ago and gerald doesn't know his real father. Gerald is also in love with a young girl but he discovers lllingworth kissing his girlfriend and this will creates tension between father and son.

An Ideal Husband (1895)

A play written in 1895. This is the story of a man called Sir Robert. He is rich but he wants to have a political future, he is supported by his wife Lady Chiltern who saw in him an ideal husband. But Sir Robert meets a woman called Mrs. Cheveley, a woman who will blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern and will expose one of his big secret.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

This novel was published in 1890. Dorian is a young man and a friend of Lord Henry, he meets Harry Basil Hallword a really famous painter who becomes fascinated by Dorian and offers to make his portrait. But this portrait is magical and as the years go by, the portrait ages whereas Dorian remains forever young and beautiful. Yet, Dorian develops a violent temper. Magics always come with a price.

Laura and Paule