The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
Wilde, Oscar
Fingal
O'Flahertie
Wills
(
1854
–
1900
), born in Dublin, the son of
Sir
William
Wilde
,
Irish
surgeon
, and
Jane
Francesca
Elgee
, well known as writer and literary hostess under the pen-name ‘Speranza’. A brilliant classical scholar, Wilde studied at Trinity College, Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford, where in
1878
he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem ‘Ravenna’. His flamboyant aestheticism attracted attention, much of it hostile; he scorned sport, collected blue china and peacock's feathers, and proclaimed himself a disciple of
Pater
and the cult of
‘art for art's sake’
mocked in
Gilbert
and
Sullivan's
Patience (
1881
).
Wilde
successfully lived up to the image of the satire, and its impetus took him on a lecture tour of the United States in
1882
, after the publication of his first volume of Poems (
1881
). In
1883
he attended the first night of his...
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