The Mind Creative March 2014
If you chance upon the list “Most Quoted in the Oxford Dictionary
of Humorous Quotations”, you will find that Oscar Wilde is way
ahead of the others on the list. Even on his deathbed, Wilde is
reported to have made a quick comment “Either those curtains
go or I do.” A prolific poet, writer, playwright and social
commentator, Oscar Wilde remains, to this day, one of the most
influential figures in English literature.
Wilde was born in 1854, the son
of a well-known surgeon
William
Wilde
and
poet
Francesca
Elgee.
He
demonstrated a brilliant mind
right from his school days and
up to his tenure at Trinity
College and Oxford. During
1884, Wilde established himself
as the leading proponent of the
Aesthetic Movement; a theory
of art and literature that
underlined the pursuit of
beauty for its own sake, rather
than to uphold any political or
social viewpoint. One wonders,
if Wilde emphasized this
paradigm in his personal life; a
life that went from the extreme
highs in achievements to a
spectacular fall from grace in a
relatively short time.
Wilde married Constance Lloyd, a wealth English lady, in 1884
and from 1888 onwards, while working as the editor of Lady’s
World, Wilde produced prodigious amounts of his works for the
next seven years. This included his famous (and only) novel
“The Picture of Dorian Gray”.
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