Social Victorians/People/Oscar Wilde

Also Known As

• Family name: Wilde

Oscar Wilde

• Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Constance Wilde

• Mrs. Constance Wilde
• Mrs. Oscar Wilde
• Constance Mary Lloyd, née
• Constance Holland (after 1895)
• Golden Dawn motto: Qui Patitur Vincit — "Who endures conquers" (Küntz 220)

Demographics

• Nationality: Irish

Family

• Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900)
• Constance Wilde (2 January 1859 – 7 April 1898)

1. Cyril Wilde Holland (5 June 1885 – 9 May 1915)
2. Vyvyan Oscar Beresford Wilde Holland (3 November 1886 – 10 October 1967)

Relations

• Oscar Wilde's father was Sir William Wilde, surgeon and chairman of the Census Commission, living in Dublin.

Acquaintances, Friends and Enemies

Acquaintances and Friends

Oscar Wilde

• Arthur Conan Doyle
• Frank Harris
• Bosie Lord (Alfred) Douglas
• George Bernard Shaw
• Henry Bourke
• Robert Ross
• Lionel Johnson
• Lady Violet Greville
• Joseph Marshall Stoddart
• Thomas Patrick Gill

Sources for Wilde's Characters

• Gwladys Robinson, for A Woman of No Importance
• Gwendolen

Organizations

Oscar Wilde

• Trinity College, Classical Scholarship and Gold Medal for Greek.
• Magdalen College, Oxford, Classical Scholarship, a double "First" in "Mods" and in Greats, Newdigate Prize for English verse.
• Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
• The Lady's Magazine, later called The Women's Magazine

Timeline

1884 May 29, Oscar Wilde and Constance Mary Lloyd married at St James's Church, Paddington.

1887, April, Wilde became editor of The Lady's World, changed its name to The Woman's World, and hired interesting writers, one of which was Alice Comyns Carr.

1888 November 13, Constance Wilde joined the Golden Dawn, probably the Isis-Urania Temple (Howe 50).

1889 August 30, Stoddart was present at the dinner at the Langham Hotel with Gill, Stoddart and Conan Doyle.

1889, October, after the 2nd volume, Wilde resigned his editorship of The Woman's World.

1889 November, Constance Wilde "had reached the Senior Philosophus grade," still Outer Order (Howe 50).

1891, Constance Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas.

1893 September 2, before, Constance Wilde's membership in the Golden Dawn was "in abeyance": the entry in the rolls reads "In abeyance with the sympathy of the Chiefs" (Howe 50).

1894, in North Africa, Wilde and Douglas met Andre Gide and encouraged him to admit his homosexuality.

1895, Oscar Wilde's trials. He had two plays running in the West End, The Importance of Being Earnest (at the St. James) and An Ideal Husband (at the Haymarket Theatre).

1897, Wilde celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in France, where he was living after having been released from prison:

A reign that spanned six decades, Oscar Wilde declared, should be celebrated with aplomb. For the occasion of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the dramatist decided to throw a marvelous party for the local village children in Berneval-sur-Mer in [816–807] France, where he had gone following his release from English prison on charges of gross indecency. Sporting a bright turquoise shirt, he ladled out "strawberries and cream, apricots, chocolates, cakes and sirop de grenadine … a huge iced cake with Jubilee de la Reine Victoire in pink sugar, just rosette with green, and a wreath of red roses around it all." He gave the children musical instruments as presents and tried to arrange them into an orchestra playing Britain’s national anthem. Wilde conducted as horns blasted and accordions swung.

1898 April 7, Constance Wilde died in Genoa.

1900 November 30, Wilde was buried first in Bagneux Cemetery and then moved to Pere LaChaise.

Bibliography

Oscar Wilde's Works

• 1881, Poems
• 1888, The Happy Prince and Other Tales
• "The Decay of Lying"
• 1890 (U.S.) and 1891 (Great Britain), The Picture of Dorian Gray
• 1891, The Soul of Man under Socialism, on the role of the artist in society
• 1891, Intentions, collection of essays previously published elsewhere
• 1891, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, and Other Stories
• 1891, A House of Pomegranates
• 1892, Lady Windemere's Fan
• 1892, Salome published in French.
• 1893, A Woman of No Importance
• 1894, English translation of Salome, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, published by John Lane
• 1895, An Ideal Husband
• 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest
• 1898, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
• 1905, De Profundis, written as a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, published in an abridged form posthumously.
• "The Portrait of W.H.," auctioned off when Wilde's house was broken up

Secondary Sources

• "Constance Lloyd." Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Lloyd (accessed July 2020).
• Howe
• Küntz
• Moyle, Franny. Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde. John Murray, 2011.
• "Oscar Wilde." Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde (accessed July 2020).