#imcompletelylost

uh, relatable.

yes! gladly! the question is where to start- his life was so full. i’ll do my best to do him justice though:

so oscar wilde was born in dublin, ireland. his mom was a writer who wrote under the pen name “speranza.” lady wilde took oscar to all the salons she attended, and oscar grew up surrounded by the intellectuals of dublin. he wrote his first poem about the death of his sister, and i think it really shows his propensity for using words even from a young age. he attended college at multiple universities, and this was where he really started to get involved in aestheticism and the decadence movement, which is what we know him for today.

he had a sweetheart named florence balcombe, who ended up marrying bram stoker, which is hilarious to me- if i remember correctly, wilde introduced the two of them originally. there’s this letter he wrote to her after the whole affair in which he talks about the two years they spent together as “the sweetest years of all my youth” and less romantically asks for the jewelry he gave her back. he married a woman named constance lloyd. wilde wrote about her beauty, but after her second pregnancy, he was sort of physically repelled by her appearance (which like... what the fuck, dude, but i guess her being aesthetically pretty was the only thing that made him attracted to her?).

at this point, with his marriage unraveling, he meets a student named robert ross. robbie ross was openly gay and, by all accounts, seduced wilde and introduced him to the world of gay men in victorian england. i’m not going to get too into this part of his life, but quick sidenote- robbie ross was referred to as “oscar wilde’s devoted friend,” and stuck by wilde until his death. wilde also spoke of how ross was a great match for him intellectually. so i think that’s pretty cool.

anyway, at some point or another, ross introduced oscar to lord alfred douglas (known to his friends as bosie). bosie was uh (this is my opinion) pretty demanding, and wilde was absolutely infatuated with him. it was not a healthy relationship, and wilde was pretty much willing to give bosie whatever he wanted. unfortunately, along with bosie came the ire and wrath of bosie’s father, the marquess of queensbury. the marquess did not like wilde one bit, and there was a whole variety of things he did to make that displeasure explicitly clear. 

the final straw was when the marquess left his calling card at oscar’s club, with a message on it calling wilde a “posing sodomite.” wilde was, as expected, pissed, and attempted to sue the marquess for criminal libel. the marquess could avoid this by proving that he had not made false statements about wilde, and through some... interesting investigative techniques, he was able to do so, which eventually lead to oscar wilde being prosecuted for gross indecency. 

(contrary to popular belief, he was not prosecuted for sodomy- they didn’t actually have enough evidence to prove that, and without getting too into the gross details, apparently wilde might not have even done it at all.)

there’s so many great quotes from the trial, but in the end, wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years hard labor. he was put into reading gaol. here i want to make a brief note- when victorians said hard labor, they meant hard labor. backbreaking, soul-crushing work. when you hear those stories about treadmills being designed to torture prisoners, this is the era we’re talking about here. wilde would have suffered. it was also at this point that wilde managed to write de profundis, which was addressed to bosie douglas, on a sheet of paper per day in the prison. which i find absolutely incredible.

anyway, once wilde got out, he had to go to france. he stayed in paris under the name sebastian melmoth. unfortunately, going to jail meant that all of wilde’s possessions had been sold, including his copyrights- he was Very Broke. robbie ross did his best to help him out, in addition to other friends, and helped buy wilde’s copyrights back. however, wilde eventually died in paris at the age of 46- i won’t get too into his cause of death here (you can look it up if you want) but fair warning it’s... kind of gross. robbie ross had a tomb built for him (featuring a relief of an angel who’s genitalia were just. stolen at one point?) and ross’s ashes were eventually placed in the tomb as well.

so... that’s the life of oscar wilde! i know this was probably longer than you expected, but i honestly skipped so many cool stories that i can go into if anyone is interested- like his relationship with his children, the time when the marquess threatened to give wilde rotten vegetables, the weird shit he did in his final years, his run-ins with censorship... there’s honestly just so much.