LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Oscar Wilde
built 239 days ago
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, has been gaining in popularity and academic respect for his literary achievements. The revival of his 1895 play, An Ideal Husband, on Broadway and in a 1999 film proved very successful. However, the Irish playwright's personal lifestyle, rather than his artistic achievements, still remains the main focus of public attention. Wilde is well-known as the "Apostle of Aestheticism," the Victorian advocate of personal decadence, the fop whose persona defines the very word, the homosexual martyr jailed for the "love that dare not speak its name." Wilde's flamboyance and eccentricity raise even more questions when contrasted to his lifelong fascination and struggle with Catholicism, and to its influence on his work.
Source:
Oscar Wilde was the second son born into an Anglo-Irish family, at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Francesca Elgee (her pseudonym being Speranza). Jane was a successful writer, being a poet for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 and a life-long Irish nationalist.[1] Sir William was Ireland's leading Oto-Ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services to medicine.[1] William ... wrote books on archaeology and folklore. He was a renowned philanthropist, and his dispensary for the care of the city's poor, in Lincoln Place at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
Source:
After leaving Portora, Oscar Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874. He was an outstanding student, and won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. He was granted a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he continued his studies from 1874 to 1878. While at Magdalen, Wilde won the 1878 Oxford Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna. He graduated with a double first, the highest grade available for undergraduate degrees in the British university system.
Source:
From the age of nine Oscar Wilde went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and was a pupil there until he was seventeen. In 1871 he went to Trinity College, Dublin with a scholarship, and here he won a Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. In 1874 he took a scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He took a First Class in Classical Moderations in 1876, and two years later he took a First Class in Literae Humaniores. He won the Newdigate Prize for English verse in 1878 for his poem Ravenna which he recited in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on 26th. June.
Source:
Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 in Dublin. Christened Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wilde, he was the second son of a distinguished Irish Protestant family. His father was an eye surgeon, knighted for his services to medicine in 1864, who ... nurtured an interest in Irish history as a collector of folk tales and customs. His mother, Jane Francesca Elgee (pseudonym “Speranza”), was a poet of the revolutionary “Young Irelanders” in 1848, and, like Oscar, she maintained lifelong support for the campaign for Irish Home Rule. Oscar went to boarding school in 1864, attending Portora Royal School at Enniskillen. From there he returned to Dublin in 1871, reading Classics at Trinity College.
Source:
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin to unconventional parents. His mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1820-96), was a poet and journalist. Her pen name was Sperenza. According to a story she warded off creditors by reciting Aeschylus. Wilde's father was Sir William Wilde, an Irish antiquarian, gifted writer, and specialist in diseases of the eye and ear, who founded a hospital in Dublin a year before Oscar was born. His work gained for him the honorary appointment of Surgeon Oculist in Ordinary to the Queen.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Oscar Wilde