Discover new books on Goodreads

See if your friends have read any of Oscar Wilde's books

more photos (1)

Oscar Wilde’s Followers (40,221)

Add New
Videos

5 comments

Oscar Wilde

Born

in Dublin, Ireland

October 16, 1854

Died

November 30, 1900

Genre

Theatre, Poetry, Humor and Comedy, Fiction, Children's

Influences

Balzac, Walter Pater, Edgar Allan Poe, John Ruskin, Peter Kropotkin, L ...more

edit data

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Joh Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. ...more

Combine Editions
Oscar Wilde’s books

Average rating: 4.12 · 3,116,962 ratings · 180,203 reviews · 5,974 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Robert Mighall (Introduction) 4.13 avg rating — 2,018,878 ratings — published 1890 — 784 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Importance of Being Earnest 4.17 avg rating — 417,047 ratings — published 1895 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Canterville Ghost 3.88 avg rating — 74,080 ratings — published 1887 — 3158 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde, Richard Allen Cave (Editor) 4.23 avg rating — 52,384 ratings — published 1898 — 144 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Ideal Husband 4.01 avg rating — 45,522 ratings — published 1893 — 1158 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Happy Prince 4.19 avg rating — 38,709 ratings — published 1888 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Complete Fairy Tales 4.16 avg rating — 34,460 ratings — published 1888 — 164 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	De Profundis 4.22 avg rating — 27,546 ratings — published 1897 — 1663 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lady Windermere's Fan 3.92 avg rating — 27,955 ratings — published 1892 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast 3.91 avg rating — 25,795 ratings — published 2016 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Oscar Wilde…

Series by Oscar Wilde

Macmillan 1962 Series of Classic Fairy Stories (2 books)
by

Oscar Wilde,

John Updike (Introduced by),

Sandro Nardini (illustrator),

Enrico Bagnoli (illustrator)

3.84 avg rating — 32 ratings

In most historical romances, love and marriage go together like...well, a horse and carriage. But what if the girl part of the girl-meets-boy...

Polls

July 2024 Old School Classics Poll

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908, 197 pages

51 votes, 28.3%

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, 1886, 317 pages

40 votes, 22.2%

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde, 1893, 96 pages

33 votes, 18.3%

The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette, 1648, 192 pages

26 votes, 14.4%

Klondike Tales by Jack London, 1901, 304 pages

15 votes, 8.3%

The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac, 1842, 339 pages

8 votes, 4.4%

Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, 1731, 192 pages

7 votes, 3.9%

180 total votes

comments and details

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Book Challenge: Sarah's 2008 Book Challenge v2.0 - Fini!	5	1879	Dec 29, 2008 09:31AM
Artsy-Fartsy: Art as a plot	6	232	Dec 29, 2008 12:11PM
Challenge: 50 Books: Dini's List for 2008 - Done with 50!	23	1488	Jan 02, 2009 07:16PM
The Book Challenge: Katy's 2009 Book Challenge	6	668	Mar 23, 2009 06:33AM
Pick-a-Shelf: 2009-02 - Fantasy - Post your Reviews Here	65	322	Mar 28, 2009 01:26AM
The Book Challenge: Michelle Kay's Reads 2009	4	1216	Apr 17, 2009 12:42AM
The Next Best Boo...: HELLO!!! We have our winners for May!!!	283	962	Apr 30, 2009 05:02PM
College Students! : Michelle Kay's 2009 Reads	7	556	May 06, 2009 09:12PM
The Next Best Boo...: Lynlee4's 2009 Reading Goals	20	221	Jul 01, 2009 07:23PM
The Book Challenge: Angie's read all the unread books on her bookshelf challenge.	25	568	Aug 04, 2009 08:32AM

More…