The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People': Jack Worthing, Algernon Moncrieff, Gwendolen, Cecily and Lady Bracknell
Literature · Playwrights
Oscar Wilde
1854–1900 · Irish
Aestheticism; comedy of manners
Oscar Wilde, the Dublin-born wit and apostle of Aestheticism, wrote the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and a string of society comedies culminating in The Importance of Being Earnest. At the height of his fame in 1895 he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, lost, and was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. He died in poverty in Paris in 1900.
How to spot them
- ▸Lady Bracknell's 'A handbag?' and the practice of 'Bunburying'
- ▸A portrait that ages while its subject stays young
- ▸Lord Alfred Douglas ('Bosie') and his father the Marquess of Queensberry
- ▸Reading Gaol, prisoner C.3.3., and De Profundis
- ▸Tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery by Jacob Epstein
Key works
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890 (book 1891))
His only novel: a young man's portrait, painted by Basil Hallward, bears the marks of his corruption
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
His first society comedy; Mrs Erlynne secretly saves her daughter's reputation
An Ideal Husband (1895)
Sir Robert Chiltern's career is threatened by Mrs Cheveley's knowledge of an old secret
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Society comedy in which Lord Illingworth is revealed as the father of his new secretary
Salome (1891 (written in French))
One-act tragedy refused a licence in Britain; later the basis of Richard Strauss's opera
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Poem about a hanged prisoner, published under the name C.3.3.; 'each man kills the thing he loves'
The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
Fairy stories including The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant
Key ideas
- Aestheticism and 'art for art's sake': the preface to Dorian Gray declares 'All art is quite useless'
- Epigram and paradox as weapons against Victorian earnestness and hypocrisy
- Essays such as The Decay of Lying and The Soul of Man under Socialism
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 to Sir William Wilde, an eye surgeon, and the poet Jane Wilde ('Speranza')
- •Studied at Trinity College Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna (1878)
- •Lectured across the United States and Canada in 1882
- •Married Constance Lloyd in 1884; they had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan
- •The Importance of Being Earnest opened at the St James's Theatre on 14 February 1895
- •Queensberry's calling card accused him of 'posing somdomite' (sic), prompting Wilde's disastrous libel action
- •Sentenced in May 1895 to two years' hard labour, serving most of it in Reading Gaol
- •Died in the Hôtel d'Alsace, Paris, on 30 November 1900, having lived in exile as 'Sebastian Melmoth'
- •Posthumously pardoned in 2017 under the 'Alan Turing law'
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Oscar Wilde
- Richard Ellmann — Oscar Wilde