Oscar Wilde

 Oscar Wilde belongs to those bourgeois writers whose literature activity, contradictory in its nature, mirrors the bourgeois ideology.
 Wilde was regarded as the leader of the England aesthetic movement, but many of his works do not follow his decadent theory of 'art for art's sake', they sometimes even contradict it. In fact, the best of them are closer to Romanticism and Realism than to decadent literature.

LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE
 Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854. His father was a famous Irish surgeon. His mother was well known in Dublin as a graceful witter of verse and prose.

 At school, and later at Oxford, Oscar displayed a considerable gift for art art the humanities. The young man received a number of classical prizes, and graduated with first-class honours.

While at the University Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of the day; he wore his hair long, decorated his rooms with peacock's feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other beautiful things. His affected paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.

 Under the influence of his teacher, the writer John Ruskin, Wilde joined then young Aesthetic Movement, which came into being as a protest against bourgeois hypocrisy ans bigotry, but later turned idealistic and reactionary. The future writer became a most sincere supported of this movement.

 After graduating from the University, Wilde turned his attention to writhing, traveling and lecturing. The Aesthetic Movement became popular, and Oscar Wilde earned the reputation of being the leader of the movement, and apostle of beauty.  

 In 1882 he went to America to lecture on the Aesthetic Movement in England. His lecture tours were triumphantly successful.

The next ten years saw the appearance of all his major works. The most popular of them are The Happy Prince and Other |Tales (1888), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and his comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The wit and brilliance of these plays helped to keep them on the stage, and they are still occasionally revived.

 Wilde also wrote poems, essays, reviews, political tracts, letters and occasional pieces on every subject he considered worthy of attention - history, drama, painting, etc. Some of these pieces were serious, some satirical; the variety of themes reflected a personality that could never remain inactive.