The Life and Literary Career of Oscar

HUE COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

ASSIGNMENT

British Literature
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                            Name: Dang Thi Quynh Lan
              Class: B2K5F

Hue, 8/2011
I. The life and literary career of Oscar

      Oscar Fingal O' Flahertie Wills Wilde, or more succinctly Oscar Wilde, was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Wilde. He had his first encounters with literature and writing early on. His father, a leading eye and ear surgeon, published books on archeology, folklore, and the satirist Jonathon Swift. His mother was a translator and was considered a revolutionary lyricist under the pseudonym "Speranza.".
      Until he was nine, Oscar Wilde was educated at home, where a French bonne and a German governess taught him their languages. He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. Until his early twenties, Wilde summered at the villa his father built in Moytura, County Mayo. There the young Wilde and his brother Willie played with George Moore. Isola died aged nine of meningitis. Wilde's poem "Requiescat" is dedicated to her memory.
      From 1864 until 1871, Wilde attended school and thereafter studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1874, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford for another four years.
Already during his studies, Wilde turned his attentions to writing and oriented himself according to the aesthetics of Walter Horatio Pater and John Ruskin.
      In 1878, he first received literary recognition for the poem "Ravenna" and therewith the Newdigate Prize. Wilde took to London after finishing his studies. Oscar Wilde, who was admired as a writer within his prudish Victorian society, was also considered a dandy and scandal author. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. They had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). During the following years in London, Wilde published many works,...