The first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was published as the lead story in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, along with five others. [124] The story begins with a man painting a picture of Gray. When Gray, who has a "face like ivory and rose leaves", sees his finished portrait, he breaks down. Distraught that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful, he inadvertently makes a Faustian bargain in which only the painted image grows old while he stays beautiful and young. For Wilde, the purpose of art would be to guide life as if beauty alone were its object. As Gray's portrait allows him to escape the corporeal ravages of his hedonism, Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art with daily life. [125] I am not sure if she ever became a Catholic herself but it was not long before she asked me to instruct two of her children, one of them being the future erratic genius, Oscar Wilde. After a few weeks I baptized these two children, Lady Wilde herself being present on the occasion. Kingston, Angela (15 February 2017). "Oscar Wilde and the sister's death that haunted his life and work". The Irish Times . Retrieved 16 January 2022. Wilde, Oscar (1997). Murray, Isobel (ed.). Complete Poetry. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.x–xi. ISBN 0192825089. Archived from the original on 3 August 2021 . Retrieved 23 August 2020. Constance On September 14, 2011, Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland contested Wilde's claimed authorship of this play entitled Constance, scheduled to open that week in the King's Head Theatre. It was not, in fact, "Oscar Wilde's final play," as its producers were claiming. Holland said Wilde did sketch out the play's scenario in 1894, but "never wrote a word" of it, and that "it is dishonest to foist this on the public." [5] The Artistic Director Adam Spreadbury-Maher of the King's Head Theatre and producer of Constance pointed out that Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, wrote in 1954, "a significant amount of the dialogue (of Constance) bears the authentic stamp of my father's hand". [6] There is further proof that the developed scenario that Constance was reconstituted from was written by Wilde between 1897 and his death in 1900, rather than the 1894 George Alexander scenario which Merlin Holland quotes. [6]

In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017 (homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967). The 2017 Act implements what is known informally as the Alan Turing law. [237] Honours Wilde is commemorated in this stained glass window at Westminster Abbey, London Queensberry was arrested for criminal libel, a charge carrying a possible sentence of up to two years in prison. Under the 1843 Libel Act, Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was in fact true, and furthermore that there was some "public benefit" to having made the accusation openly. [169] Queensberry's lawyers thus hired private detectives to find evidence of Wilde's homosexual liaisons. [170] Holland, Merlin; Rupert Hart-Davis (2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. New York City: Henry Holt and Company (US edition). ISBN 0805059156. London: Fourth Estate (UK edition). ISBN 978-1-85702-781-5. a b Wheatcroft, Geoffrey (May 2003). "Not Green, Not Red, Not Pink". The Atlantic Monthly. Archived from the original on 22 May 2013 . Retrieved 10 March 2017.The Philosophy of Dress" First published in The New-York Tribune (1885), published for the first time in book form in Oscar Wilde On Dress (2013).

Later on, I think everyone will recognise his achievements; his plays and essays will endure. Of course, you may think with others that his personality and conversation were far more wonderful than anything he wrote, so that his written works give only a pale reflection of his power. Perhaps that is so, and of course, it will be impossible to reproduce what is gone forever.Linder, Douglas O. "Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Direct Examination (April 3,1895)". Famous Trials. University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Archived from the original on 17 August 2021 . Retrieved 29 November 2020. I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world ... And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. [207]

Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal (Paris, 1893) has been attributed to Wilde, but its authorship is unclear. One theory is that it was a combined effort by several of Wilde's friends, which he may have edited. Wilde, age forty, had earlier stated he was thirty-nine years old at the beginning of his direct examination by Clarke. When pressed about the lie by Carson, Wilde flippantly replied: "I have no wish to pose as being young. I am thirty-nine or forty. You have my certificate and that settles the matter." [179] Main articles: Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband Lake Windermere in northern England where Wilde began working on his first hit play, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), during a summer visit in 1891. [142] The essay was later published in "Miscellanies", the final section of the 1908 edition of Wilde's collected works. [53]

The Legacy of Oscar Wilde

Pearce, Joseph (2004). Google Books link to Pearce, Joseph 'The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde' . ISBN 9781586170264. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016 . Retrieved 17 October 2015. The Oscar Wilde Memorial walk in Reading includes gates with cultural references to Wilde (the outside wall of the Gaol is to the left) Parker, Peter (26 October 2003). "The Secret Life of Oscar". The Times. London. Archived from the original on 24 June 2011 . Retrieved 22 February 2010. (subscription required) Autobiography or Biography". The Pulitzer Prizes. Archived from the original on 25 May 2015 . Retrieved 22 February 2010. At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. [3] The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. [4] After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. [5] During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Johnson, Leon (2000). "(Re)membering Wilde". Archived from the original on 21 October 2014 . Retrieved 24 July 2015. In 2014 Wilde was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields". [239] [240] [241] Catholicism deeply appealed to him, especially its rich liturgy, and he discussed converting to it with clergy several times. In 1877, Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope PiusIX in Rome. [36] He eagerly read the books of Cardinal Newman, a noted Anglican priest who had converted to Catholicism and risen in the church hierarchy. He became more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastian Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had received some high-profile converts. Neither his father, who threatened to cut off his funds, nor Mahaffy thought much of the plan; but Wilde, the supreme individualist, balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed, and on the appointed day of his baptism into Catholicism, sent Father Bowden a bunch of altar lilies instead. Wilde did retain a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy. [37]

Main article: Salome (play) Jokanaan and Salome. Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for the 1893 edition of Salome. The Women of Homer (Written 1876, while at college). First published in Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer (2008) by The Oscar Wilde Society. Wilde's professional success was mirrored by an escalation in his feud with Queensberry. Queensberry had planned to insult Wilde publicly by throwing a bouquet of rotting vegetables onto the stage; Wilde was tipped off and had Queensberry barred from entering the theatre. [166] Fifteen weeks later Wilde was in prison.