In 1892, Oscar Wilde was near the peak of his fame. He had already gained international renown as a poet, essayist and wit. His novel The Picture of Dorian Gray…
Category: Oscar Wilde
“I have nothing to declare except my genius” – the famous Oscar Wilde quip that he probably didn’t say…
On January 3, 1882, the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde disembarked from the ship that brought him from England to New York. It was the beginning of what would…
“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”
The phrase “beautiful people” had been used prior to the 1960s. For example, in Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband, a social comedy first performed in 1895, one of the…
“Each man kills the thing he loves.” (Sometimes with a straight razor.)
On February 13, 1898, the first edition of Oscar Wilde’s now famous poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was published in London by publisher Leonard Smithers. Those initial copies of…