texts:
 can hear
the daisies grow"

University education: 1870s

Trinity College Dublin
<mask> left Portora with a royal scholarship to read classics at Trinity College Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother <mask>. Trinity, one of the leading classical schools, placed him with scholars such as R. Y. Tyrell, Arthur Palmer, Edward Dowden and his tutor, Professor J. P. Mahaffy, who inspired his interest in Greek literature. As a student <mask> worked with Mahaffy on the latter's book Social Life in Greece.<mask>, despite later reservations, called Mahaffy "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who showed me how to love Greek things". For his part, Mahaffy boasted of having created <mask>; later, he said <mask> was "the only blot on my tutorship". The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, as members discussed intellectual and artistic subjects such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne weekly. <mask> quickly became an established member – the members' suggestion book for 1874 contains two pages of banter (sportingly) mocking <mask>'s emergent aestheticism. He presented a paper titled "Aesthetic Morality". At Trinity, <mask> established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, won a scholarship by competitive examination in his second and, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal in Greek, the University's highest academic award. He was encouraged to compete for a demyship (a half-scholarship worth £95 (£ today) per year) to Magdalen College, Oxford – which he won easily.Magdalen College, Oxford
At Magdalen, he read

masks:
Wilde
Willie Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde


type: original

texts: Greats from 1874 to 1878, and from there he applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected. Attracted by its dress, secrecy, and ritual, <mask> petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the "Sublime Degree of Master Mason". During a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commented he "would be awfully sorry to give it up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy". <mask>'s active involvement in Freemasonry lasted only for the time he spent at Oxford; he allowed his membership of the Apollo University Lodge to lapse after failing to pay subscriptions. Catholicism deeply appealed to him, especially its rich liturgy, and he discussed converting to it with clergy several times. In 1877, <mask> was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome. 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 <mask>, 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. <mask> did retain a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy. While at Magdalen College, <mask> became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He wore his hair long, openly scorned

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts: "manly" sports though he occasionally boxed, and he decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He once remarked to friends, whom he entertained lavishly, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." The line quickly became famous, accepted as a slogan by aesthetes but used against them by critics who sensed in it a terrible vacuousness.Some elements disdained the aesthetes, but their languishing attitudes and showy costumes became a recognised pose. <mask> was once physically attacked by a group of four fellow students, and dealt with them single-handedly, surprising critics. By his third year <mask> had truly begun to develop himself and his myth, and considered his learning to be more expansive than what was within the prescribed texts. This attitude resulted in his being rusticated for one term, after he had returned late to a college term from a trip to Greece with Mahaffy. <mask> did not meet Walter Pater until his third year, but had been enthralled by his Studies in the History of the Renaissance, published during <mask>'s final year in Trinity. Pater argued that man's sensibility to beauty should be refined above all else, and that each moment should be felt to its fullest extent. Years later, in De Profundis, <mask> described Pater's Studies... as "that book that has had such a strange influence over my life".He learned tracts of the book by heart, and carried it with him on travels in later years. Pater gave <mask> his sense of almost flippant devotion to art, though he gained a purpose for it through the lectures and writings of critic


texts:
 John Ruskin. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aestheticism of Pater, arguing that the importance of art lies in its potential for the betterment of society. Ruskin admired beauty, but believed it must be allied with, and applied to, moral good. When <mask> eagerly attended Ruskin's lecture series The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence, he learned about aesthetics as the non-mathematical elements of painting. Despite being given to neither early rising nor manual labour, <mask> volunteered for Ruskin's project to convert a swampy country lane into a smart road neatly edged with flowers. <mask> won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna", which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read it at Encaenia.In November 1878, he graduated with a double first in his B.A. of Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores (Greats). <mask> wrote to a friend, "The dons are '' beyond words – the Bad Boy doing so well in the end!" Apprenticeship of an aesthete: 1880s

Debut in society
After graduation from Oxford, <mask> returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She became engaged to Bram Stoker and they married in 1878. <mask> was disappointed but stoic: he wrote to her, remembering "the two sweet years – the sweetest years of all my youth" during which they had been close. He also stated his intention to "return to England, probably for good".This he did in 1878, only briefly visiting Ireland twice after that. Unsure of his next step, <mask> wrote to various acquaintances enquiring about Classics positions at Oxford or Cambridge. The Rise of

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts: Historical Criticism was his submission for the Chancellor's Essay prize of 1879, which, though no longer a student, he was still eligible to enter. Its subject, "Historical Criticism among the Ancients" seemed ready-made for <mask> – with both his skill in composition and ancient learning – but he struggled to find his voice with the long, flat, scholarly style. Unusually, no prize was awarded that year. With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachelor in London. The 1881 British Census listed <mask> as a boarder at 1 (now 44) Tite Street, Chelsea, where Frank Miles, a society painter, was the head of the household.He had been publishing lyrics and poems in magazines since entering Trinity College, especially in Kottabos and the Dublin University Magazine. In mid-1881, at 27 years old, he published  Poems, which collected, revised and expanded his poems. Though the book sold out its first print run of 750 copies it was not generally well received by the critics, Punch for example saying "The poet is <mask>, but his poetry's tame". By a tight vote, the Oxford Union condemned the book for alleged plagiarism. The librarian, who had requested the book for the library, returned the presentation copy to <mask> with a note of apology. Biographer Richard Ellmann argues that <mask>'s poem "Hélas!" was a sincere, though flamboyant, attempt to explain the dichotomies the poet saw in himself; one line reads: "To drift with every passion till my soul / Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play".The book had further printings in 1882. It was bound in a rich, enamel parchment

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts:
 cover (embossed with gilt blossom) and printed on hand-made Dutch paper; over the next few years, <mask> presented many copies to the dignitaries and writers who received him during his lecture tours. North America: 1882

Aestheticism was sufficiently in vogue to be caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in Patience (1881). Richard D'Oyly Carte, an English impresario, invited <mask> to make a lecture tour of North America, simultaneously priming the pump for the US tour of Patience and selling this most charming aesthete to the American public. <mask> journeyed on the SS Arizona, arriving 2 January 1882, and disembarking the following day. Originally planned to last four months, the tour continued for almost a year owing to its commercial success. <mask> sought to transpose the beauty he saw in art into daily life.This was a practical as well as philosophical project: in Oxford he had surrounded himself with blue china and lilies, and now one of his lectures was on interior design. In a British Library article on aestheticism and decadence, Carolyn Burdett writes, "<mask> teased his readers with the claim that life imitates art rather than the other way round. His point was a serious one: we notice London fogs, he argued, because art and literature has taught us to do so. <mask>, among others, 'performed' these maxims. He presented himself as the impeccably dressed and mannered dandy figure whose life was a work of art." When asked to explain reports that he had paraded down Piccadilly in London carrying a lily, long hair flowing, <mask> replied, "It's not whether I did it or not that's important, but whether people believed


texts: I did it". <mask> believed that the artist should hold forth higher ideals, and that pleasure and beauty would replace utilitarian ethics.<mask> and aestheticism were both mercilessly caricatured and criticised in the press: the Springfield Republican, for instance, commented on <mask>'s behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that <mask>'s conduct was more a bid for notoriety rather than devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. T. W. Higginson, a cleric and abolitionist, wrote in "Unmanly Manhood" of his general concern that <mask>, "whose only distinction is that he has written a thin volume of very mediocre verse", would improperly influence the behaviour of men and women. According to biographer Michèle Mendelssohn, <mask> was the subject of anti-Irish caricature and was portrayed as a monkey, a blackface performer and a Christy's Minstrel throughout his career. "Harper's Weekly put a sunflower-worshipping monkey dressed as <mask> on the front of the January 1882 issue. The magazine didn't let its reputation for quality impede its expression of what are now considered odious ethnic and racial ideologies. The drawing stimulated other American maligners and, in England, had a full-page reprint in the Lady's Pictorial. ...When the National Republican discussed <mask>, it was to explain 'a few items as to the animal's pedigree.' And on 22 January 1882 the Washington Post illustrated the Wild Man of Borneo alongside <mask> of England and asked 'How far is it from this to this?'" Though his press reception was hostile, <mask> was well received in diverse settings across America: he drank

masks:
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde


texts:
 whiskey with miners in Leadville, Colorado, and was fêted at the most fashionable salons in many cities he visited. London life and marriage
His earnings, plus expected income from The Duchess of Padua, allowed him to move to Paris between February and mid-May 1883. While there he met Robert Sherard, whom he entertained constantly. "We are dining on the Duchess tonight", <mask> would declare before taking him to an expensive restaurant. In August he briefly returned to New York for the production of Vera, his first play, after it was turned down in London.He reportedly entertained the other passengers with "Ave Imperatrix!, A Poem on England", about the rise and fall of empires. E. C. Stedman, in Victorian Poets, describes this "lyric to England" as "manly verse – a poetic and eloquent invocation". In London, he had been introduced in 1881 to Constance Lloyd, daughter of Horace Lloyd, a wealthy Queen's Counsel. She happened to be visiting Dublin in 1884, when <mask> was lecturing at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St James's Church, Paddington, in London. Although Constance had an annual allowance of £250, which was generous for a young woman (equivalent to about £ in current value), the <mask>s had relatively luxurious tastes. They had preached to others for so long on the subject of design that people expected their home to set new standards.No. 16, Tite Street was duly renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons together, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). <mask> became the sole literary signatory of George Bernard Shaw's petition for a

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts:
 pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886. In 1886 at Oxford, <mask> met Robert Ross. Ross, who had read <mask>'s poems before they met, seemed unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality. By Richard Ellmann's account, he was a precocious seventeen-year-old who "so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce <mask>".According to Daniel Mendelsohn, <mask>, who had long alluded to Greek love, was "initiated into homosexual sex" by Ross, while his "marriage had begun to unravel after his wife's second pregnancy, which left him physically repelled". Prose writing: 1886–1891

Journalism and editorship: 1886–1889

Criticism over artistic matters in The Pall Mall Gazette provoked a letter in self-defence, and soon <mask> was a contributor to that and other journals during 1885–87. He enjoyed reviewing and journalism; the form suited his style. He could organise and share his views on art, literature and life, yet in a format less tedious than lecturing. Buoyed up, his reviews were largely chatty and positive. <mask>, like his parents before him, also supported the cause of Irish nationalism. When Charles Stewart Parnell was falsely accused of inciting murder, <mask> wrote a series of astute columns defending him in the Daily Chronicle.His flair, having previously been put mainly into socialising, suited journalism and rapidly attracted notice. With his youth nearly over, and a family to support, in mid-1887 <mask> became the editor of The Lady's World magazine, his name prominently appearing on the cover. He promptly renamed it as The Woman's

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts: World and raised its tone, adding serious articles on parenting, culture, and politics, while keeping discussions of fashion and arts. Two pieces of fiction were usually included, one to be read to children, the other for the ladies themselves. <mask> worked hard to solicit good contributions from his wide artistic acquaintance, including those of <mask> and his wife Constance, while his own "Literary and Other Notes" were themselves popular and amusing. The initial vigour and excitement which he brought to the job began to fade as administration, commuting and office life became tedious. At the same time as <mask>'s interest flagged, the publishers became concerned anew about circulation: sales, at the relatively high price of one shilling, remained low.Increasingly sending instructions to the magazine by letter, <mask> began a new period of creative work and his own column appeared less regularly. In October 1889, <mask> had finally found his voice in prose and, at the end of the second volume, <mask> left The Woman's World. The magazine outlasted him by one issue. If <mask>'s period at the helm of the magazine was a mixed success from an organizational point of view, it played a pivotal role in his development as a writer and facilitated his ascent to fame. Whilst <mask> the journalist supplied articles under the guidance of his editors, <mask> the editor was forced to learn to manipulate the literary marketplace on his own terms. During the late 1880s, <mask> was a close friend of the artist James McNeill Whistler and they dined together on many occasions. At one of these dinners, Whistler said a bon mot that <mask>

masks:
Wilde
Lady Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde


texts:
 found particularly witty, <mask> exclaimed that he wished that he had said it, and Whistler retorted "You will, <mask>, you will".Herbert Vivian—a mutual friend of <mask> and Whistler— attended the dinner and recorded it in his article The Reminiscences of a Short Life which appeared in The Sun in 1889. The article alleged that <mask> had a habit of passing off other people's witticisms as his own—especially Whistler's. <mask> considered Vivian's article to be a scurrilous betrayal, and it directly caused the broken friendship between <mask> and Whistler. The Reminiscences also caused great acrimony between <mask> and Vivian, <mask> accusing Vivian of "the inaccuracy of an eavesdropper with the method of a blackmailer" and banishing Vivian from his circle. Shorter fiction

<mask> published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888, and had been regularly writing fairy stories for magazines. In 1891 he published two more collections, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, and in September A House of Pomegranates was dedicated "To Constance Mary <mask>". "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", which <mask> had begun in 1887, was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in July 1889.It is a short story, which reports a conversation, in which the theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of the boy actor "Willie Hughes", is advanced, retracted, and then propounded again. The only evidence for this is two supposed puns within the sonnets themselves. The anonymous narrator is at first sceptical, then believing, finally flirtatious with the reader: he concludes that "there is really a great deal to

masks: Wilde Oscar Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts:
 be said of the Willie Hughes theory of Shakespeare's sonnets." By the end fact and fiction have melded together. Arthur Ransome wrote that <mask> "read something of himself into Shakespeare's sonnets" and became fascinated with the "Willie Hughes theory" despite the lack of biographical evidence for the historical William Hughes' existence. Instead of writing a short but serious essay on the question, <mask> tossed the theory amongst the three characters of the story, allowing it to unfold as background to the plot. The story thus is an early masterpiece of <mask>'s combining many elements that interested him: conversation, literature and the idea that to shed oneself of an idea one must first convince another of its truth.Ransome concludes that <mask> succeeds precisely because the literary criticism is unveiled with such a deft touch. Though containing nothing but "special pleading", it would not, he says "be possible to build an airier castle in Spain than this of the imaginary William Hughes" we continue listening nonetheless to be charmed by the telling. "You must believe in Willie Hughes," <mask> told an acquaintance, "I almost do, myself." Essays and dialogues

<mask>, having tired of journalism, had been busy setting out his aesthetic ideas more fully in a series of longer prose pieces which were published in the major literary-intellectual journals of the day. In January 1889, The Decay of Lying: A Dialogue appeared in The Nineteenth Century, and Pen, Pencil and Poison, a satirical biography of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, in The Fortnightly Review, edited by <mask>'s friend Frank Harris. Two of <mask>'s four


texts: writings on aesthetics are dialogues: though <mask> had evolved professionally from lecturer to writer, he retained an oral tradition of sorts. Having always excelled as a wit and raconteur, he often composed by assembling phrases, bons mots and witticisms into a longer, cohesive work.<mask> was concerned about the effect of moralising on art; he believed in art's redemptive, developmental powers: "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine." In his only political text, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, he argued political conditions should establish this primacy – private property should be abolished, and cooperation should be substituted for competition. At the same time, he stressed that the government most amenable to artists was no government at all. <mask> envisioned a society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity, effort which can instead be expended on artistic creation. George Orwell summarised, "In effect, the world will be populated by artists, each striving after perfection in the way that seems best to him."This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, intellectual socialists who advocated using state apparatus to change social conditions, nor did it endear him to the monied classes whom he had previously entertained. Hesketh Pearson, introducing a collection of <mask>'s essays in 1950, remarked how The Soul of Man Under Socialism had been an inspirational text for


texts:
 revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia but laments that in the Stalinist era "it is doubtful whether there are any uninspected places in which it could now be hidden". <mask> considered including this pamphlet and "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", his essay-story on Shakespeare's sonnets, in a new anthology in 1891, but eventually decided to limit it to purely aesthetic subjects. Intentions packaged revisions of four essays: The Decay of Lying; Pen, Pencil and Poison; The Truth of Masks (first published 1885); and The Critic as Artist in two parts. For Pearson the biographer, the essays and dialogues exhibit every aspect of <mask>'s genius and character: wit, romancer, talker, lecturer, humanist and scholar and concludes that "no other productions of his have as varied an appeal". 1891 turned out to be <mask>'s annus mirabilis; apart from his three collections he also produced his only novel. The Picture of Dorian Gray

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.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 <mask>, 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, <mask> sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw


texts: in art with daily life. Reviewers immediately criticised the novel's decadence and homosexual allusions; The Daily Chronicle for example, called it "unclean", "poisonous", and "heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction". <mask> vigorously responded, writing to the editor of the Scots Observer, in which he clarified his stance on ethics and aesthetics in art – "If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly will see its moral lesson."He nevertheless revised it extensively for book publication in 1891: six new chapters were added, some overtly decadent passages and homo-eroticism excised, and a preface was included consisting of twenty-two epigrams, such as "Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." Contemporary reviewers and modern critics have postulated numerous possible sources of the story, a search Jershua McCormack argues is futile because <mask> "has tapped a root of Western folklore so deep and ubiquitous that the story has escaped its origins and returned to the oral tradition". <mask> claimed the plot was "an idea that is as old as the history of literature but to which I have given a new form". Modern critic Robin McKie considered the novel to be technically mediocre, saying that the conceit of the plot had guaranteed its fame, but the device is never pushed to its full. On the other hand, Robert McCrum of The Guardian lists it among the 100 best novels ever written in English, calling it "an arresting, and slightly camp, exercise in late-Victorian gothic". Theatrical career:

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts:
 1892–1895

Salomé

The 1891 census records the <mask>s' residence at 16 Tite Street, where he lived with his wife Constance and two sons.<mask> though, not content with being better known than ever in London, returned to Paris in October 1891, this time as a respected writer. He was received at the salons littéraires, including the famous mardis of Stéphane Mallarmé, a renowned symbolist poet of the time. <mask>'s two plays during the 1880s, Vera; or, The Nihilists and The Duchess of Padua, had not met with much success. He had continued his interest in the theatre and now, after finding his voice in prose, his thoughts turned again to the dramatic form as the biblical iconography of Salome filled his mind. One evening, after discussing depictions of Salome throughout history, he returned to his hotel and noticed a blank copybook lying on the desk, and it occurred to him to write in it what he had been saying. The result was a new play, Salomé, written rapidly and in French. A tragedy, it tells the story of Salome, the stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but mother's delight, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils.When <mask> returned to London just before Christmas the Paris Echo referred to him as "le great event" of the season. Rehearsals of the play, starring Sarah Bernhardt, began but the play was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain, since it depicted biblical characters. Salome was published jointly in Paris and London in 1893, but was not performed until 1896 in Paris, during <mask>'s


texts:
 later incarceration. Comedies of society

<mask>, who had first set out to irritate Victorian society with his dress and talking points, then outrage it with Dorian Gray, his novel of vice hidden beneath art, finally found a way to critique society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan was first performed on 20 February 1892 at St James's Theatre, packed with the cream of society. On the surface a witty comedy, there is subtle subversion underneath: "it concludes with collusive concealment rather than collective disclosure". The audience, like Lady Windermere, are forced to soften harsh social codes in favour of a more nuanced view.The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely trashed by conservative critics. The success of the play saw <mask> earn £7,000 in the first year alone (worth £ today). His first hit play was followed by A Woman of No Importance in 1893, another Victorian comedy, revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations. <mask> was commissioned to write two more plays and An Ideal Husband, written in 1894, followed in January 1895. Peter Raby said these essentially English plays were well-pitched: "<mask>, with one eye on the dramatic genius of Ibsen, and the other on the commercial competition in London's West End, targeted his audience with adroit precision". Queensberry family

In mid-1891 Lionel Johnson introduced <mask> to Lord Alfred Douglas, Johnson's cousin and an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. Known to his family and friends as "Bosie", he was a handsome and spoilt young man.An intimate friendship sprang up


texts: between <mask> and Douglas and by 1893 <mask> was infatuated with Douglas and they consorted together regularly in a tempestuous affair. If <mask> was relatively indiscreet, even flamboyant, in the way he acted, Douglas was reckless in public. <mask>, who was earning up to £100 a week from his plays (his salary at The Woman's World had been £6), indulged Douglas's every whim: material, artistic, or sexual. Douglas soon initiated <mask> into the Victorian underground of gay prostitution and <mask> was introduced to a series of young working-class male prostitutes (rent boys) from 1892 onwards by Alfred Taylor. These infrequent rendezvous usually took the same form: <mask> would meet the boy, offer him gifts, dine him privately and then take him to a hotel room. Unlike <mask>'s idealised relations with Ross, John Gray, and Douglas, all of whom remained part of his aesthetic circle, these consorts were uneducated and knew nothing of literature. Soon his public and private lives had become sharply divided; in De Profundis he wrote to Douglas that "It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement...I did not know that when they were to strike at me it was to be at another's piping and at another's pay." Douglas and some Oxford friends founded a journal, The Chameleon, to which <mask> "sent a page of paradoxes originally destined for the Saturday Review". "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" was to come under attack six months later at <mask>'s trial, where he was forced to defend the magazine to which he had sent his work. In any case, it became unique: The Chameleon was not published again.

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts:
 Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was known for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the modern rules of boxing. Queensberry, who feuded regularly with his son, confronted <mask> and Lord Alfred about the nature of their relationship several times, but <mask> was able to mollify him. In June 1894, he called on <mask> at 16 Tite Street, without an appointment, and clarified his stance: "I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad.And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you" to which <mask> responded: "I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, but the <mask> rule is to shoot on sight". His account in De Profundis was less triumphant: "It was when, in my library at Tite Street, waving his small hands in the air in epileptic fury, your father... stood uttering every foul word his foul mind could think of, and screaming the loathsome threats he afterwards with such cunning carried out". Queensberry only described the scene once, saying <mask> had "shown him the white feather", meaning he had acted in a cowardly way. Though trying to remain calm, <mask> saw that he was becoming ensnared in a brutal family quarrel. He did not wish to bear Queensberry's insults, but he knew to confront him could lead to disaster were his liaisons disclosed publicly. The Importance of Being Earnest

<mask>'s final play again returns to the theme of switched identities: the play's two protagonists engage in "bunburying" (the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores.

masks:
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde


texts: Earnest is even lighter in tone than <mask>'s earlier comedies.While their characters often rise to serious themes in moments of crisis, Earnest lacks the by-now stock Wildean characters: there is no "woman with a past", the principals are neither villainous nor cunning, simply idle cultivés, and the idealistic young women are not that innocent. Mostly set in drawing rooms and almost completely lacking in action or violence, Earnest lacks the self-conscious decadence found in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome. The play, now considered <mask>'s masterpiece, was rapidly written in <mask>'s artistic maturity in late 1894. It was first performed on 14 February 1895, at St James's Theatre in London, <mask>'s second collaboration with George Alexander, the actor-manager. Both author and producer assiduously revised, prepared and rehearsed every line, scene and setting in the months before the premiere, creating a carefully constructed representation of late-Victorian society, yet simultaneously mocking it. During rehearsal Alexander requested that <mask> shorten the play from four acts to three, which the author did. Premieres at St James's seemed like "brilliant parties", and the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest was no exception.Allan Aynesworth (who played Algernon) recalled to Hesketh Pearson, "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night." Earnests immediate reception as <mask>'s best work to date finally crystallised his fame into a solid artistic reputation. In a review of the play for The Pall Mall Gazette H. G. Wells wrote, "More humorous dealing with


texts:
 theatrical conventions it would be difficult to imagine. Mr <mask> has decorated a humour that is Gilbertian with innumerable spangles of that wit that is all his own". The Importance of Being Earnest remains his most popular play. <mask>'s professional success was mirrored by an escalation in his feud with Queensberry. Queensberry had planned to insult <mask> publicly by throwing a bouquet of rotting vegetables onto the stage; <mask> was tipped off and had Queensberry barred from entering the theatre.Fifteen weeks later <mask> was in prison. Trials

<mask> v. Queensberry
On 18 February 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at <mask>'s club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For <mask>, posing somdomite". <mask>, encouraged by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry for libel, since the note amounted to a public accusation that <mask> had committed the crime of sodomy. 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. Queensberry's lawyers thus hired private detectives to find evidence of <mask>'s homosexual liaisons. <mask>'s friends had advised him against the prosecution at a Saturday Review meeting at the Café Royal on 24 March 1895; Frank Harris warned him that "they are going to prove sodomy against you" and advised him to flee to France.<mask> and Douglas walked out

masks:
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde


texts: in a huff, <mask> saying "it is at such moments as these that one sees who are one's true friends". The scene was witnessed by George Bernard Shaw who recalled it to Arthur Ransome a day or so before Ransome's trial for libelling Douglas in 1913. To Ransome it confirmed what he had said in his 1912 book on <mask>: that Douglas's rivalry for <mask> with Robbie Ross and his arguments with his father had resulted in <mask>'s public disaster, as <mask> wrote in De Profundis. Douglas lost his case. Shaw included an account of the argument between Harris, Douglas and <mask> in the preface to his play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of <mask>'s private life with Taylor and Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of private detectives had directed Queensberry's lawyers, led by Edward Carson QC, to the world of the Victorian underground.<mask>'s association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, cross-dressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses since they too were accomplices to the crimes of which <mask> was accused. The trial opened at the Old Bailey on 3 April 1895 before Justice Richard Henn Collins amid scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. The extent of the evidence massed against <mask> forced him to declare meekly, "I am the prosecutor in this case". <mask>'s lawyer, Sir Edward Clarke, opened the case by pre-emptively asking <mask> about two suggestive letters <mask> had written to Douglas, which the defence had in its possession. He

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts: characterised the first as a "prose sonnet" and admitted that the "poetical language" might seem strange to the court but claimed its intent was innocent. <mask> stated that the letters had been obtained by blackmailers who had attempted to extort money from him, but he had refused, suggesting they should take the £60 (equal to £ today) offered, "unusual for a prose piece of that length". He claimed to regard the letters as works of art rather than something of which to be ashamed.Carson, a fellow Dubliner who had attended Trinity College Dublin at the same time as <mask>, cross-examined <mask> on how he perceived the moral content of his works. <mask> replied with characteristic wit and flippancy, claiming that works of art are not capable of being moral or immoral but only well or poorly made, and that only "brutes and illiterates", whose views on art "are incalculably stupid", would make such judgements about art. Carson, a leading barrister, diverged from the normal practice of asking closed questions. Carson pressed <mask> on each topic from every angle, squeezing out nuances of meaning from <mask>'s answers, removing them from their aesthetic context and portraying <mask> as evasive and decadent. While <mask> won the most laughs from the court, Carson scored the most legal points. To undermine <mask>'s credibility, and to justify Queensberry's description of <mask> as a "posing somdomite", Carson drew from the witness an admission of his capacity for "posing", by demonstrating that he had lied about his age under oath. Playing on this, he returned to the topic throughout his cross-examination.Carson also tried to


texts: justify Queensberry's characterisation by quoting from <mask>'s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, referring in particular to a scene in the second chapter, in which Lord Henry Wotton explains his decadent philosophy to Dorian, an "innocent young man", in Carson's words. Carson then moved to the factual evidence and questioned <mask> about his friendships with younger, lower-class men. <mask> admitted being on a first-name basis and lavishing gifts upon them, but insisted that nothing untoward had occurred and that the men were merely good friends of his. Carson repeatedly pointed out the unusual nature of these relationships and insinuated that the men were prostitutes. <mask> replied that he did not believe in social barriers, and simply enjoyed the society of young men. Then Carson asked <mask> directly whether he had ever kissed a certain servant boy, <mask> responded, "Oh, dear no. He was a particularly plain boy – unfortunately ugly – I pitied him for it."Carson pressed him on the answer, repeatedly asking why the boy's ugliness was relevant. <mask> hesitated, then for the first time became flustered: "You sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me; and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously." In his opening speech for the defence, Carson announced that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with <mask>. On the advice of his lawyers, <mask> dropped the prosecution. Queensberry was found not guilty, as the court declared that his accusation that <mask> was "posing as a Somdomite " was justified, "true in substance and in fact". Under the


texts:
 Libel Act 1843, Queensberry's acquittal rendered <mask> legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defence, which left <mask> bankrupt. Regina v. <mask>
After <mask> left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency.Robbie Ross found <mask> at the Cadogan Hotel, Pont Street, Knightsbridge, with Reginald Turner. Both men advised <mask> to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France; his mother advised him to stay and fight. <mask>, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late." On 6 April 1895, <mask> was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, a term meaning homosexual acts not amounting to buggery (an offence under a separate statute). At <mask>'s instruction, Ross and <mask>'s butler forced their way into the bedroom and library of 16 Tite Street, packing some personal effects, manuscripts, and letters. <mask> was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway, where he received daily visits from Douglas.Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895, before Mr Justice Charles. <mask> pleaded not guilty. He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to give evidence; he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Fearing persecution, Ross and many others also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination <mask> was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently:

This response was counter-productive in a legal sense as it only served to reinforce the charges of


texts: homosexual behaviour. The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. <mask>'s counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, was finally able to get a magistrate to allow <mask> and his friends to post bail.The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 surety required by the court, having disagreed with <mask>'s treatment by the press and the courts. <mask> was freed from Holloway and, shunning attention, went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of his firm friends. Edward Carson approached Frank Lockwood QC, the Solicitor General and asked "Can we not let up on the fellow now?" Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicised to be dropped. The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 <mask> and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge described the sentence, the maximum allowed, as "totally inadequate for a case such as this", and that the case was "the worst case I have ever tried".<mask>'s response "And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?" was drowned out in cries of "Shame" in the courtroom. Although it is widely believed that the charges were related to <mask>'s consensual activities, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, which includes an original transcript of the libel trial (which came to light in 2000), suggests that he took advantage of teenagers. However, one of the authors, Merlin Holland, argues, "One is taking it out of context, he was not an odious predator. The boys seemed to be willing partners and there appeared to be a relationship going on between him and them".


texts:
 Antony Edmonds feels that <mask> would have faced prosecution today: "For example, he certainly paid for sex with youths under the age of 18 which is a criminal offence.But even if his activities had led only to exposure and not to arrest, he would have been savagely pilloried in the media. <mask> was 39 when he seduced Alphonse Conway, and Conway was an inexperienced boy of 16". Imprisonment

<mask> was incarcerated from 25 May 1895 to 18 May 1897. He first entered Newgate Prison in London for processing, then was moved to Pentonville Prison, where the "hard labour" to which he had been sentenced consisted of many hours of walking a treadmill and picking oakum (separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes), and where prisoners were allowed to read only the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress. A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison in London. Inmates there also followed the regimen of "hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed", which wore harshly on <mask>'s delicate health. In November he collapsed during chapel from illness and hunger.His right ear drum was ruptured in the fall, an injury that later contributed to his death. He spent two months in the infirmary. Richard B. Haldane, the Liberal MP and reformer, visited <mask> and had him transferred in November to Reading Gaol,  west of London on 23 November 1895. The transfer itself was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him on the railway platform. He spent the remainder of his sentence there, addressed and identified only as "C.3.3" – the occupant of the third cell on the third floor of C ward. About five months after


texts: <mask> arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his wife on 29 March 1896; on 17 June Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896 – the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. From Wooldridge's hanging, <mask> later wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol.<mask> was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books and writing materials. <mask> requested, among others, the Bible in French; Italian and German grammars; some Ancient Greek texts; Dante's Divine Comedy; Joris-Karl Huysmans's new French novel about Christian redemption, En route; and essays by St Augustine, Cardinal Newman and Walter Pater. Between January and March 1897 <mask> wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas. He was not allowed to send it, but was permitted to take it with him when released from prison. In reflective mode, <mask> coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful agent provocateur in Victorian society, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was: one who "stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age". It was from these heights that his life with Douglas began, and <mask> examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what <mask> finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Douglas' remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting."<mask> blamed himself, though, for the

masks: Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde Wilde


texts:
 ethical degradation of character that he allowed Douglas to bring about in him and took responsibility for his own fall, "I am here for having tried to put your father in prison." The first half concludes with <mask> forgiving Douglas, for his own sake as much as Douglas's. The second half of the letter traces <mask>'s spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment through his prison reading. He realised that his ordeal had filled his soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time. ... 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.<mask> was released from prison on 19 May 1897 and sailed that evening for Dieppe, France. He never returned to the UK. On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out <mask>'s instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). The letter was partially published in 1905 as De Profundis; its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962 in The Letters of <mask>. Decline: 1897–1900

Exile

Though <mask>'s health had suffered greatly from the harshness and diet of prison, he had a feeling of spiritual renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, <mask> wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", <mask> told a journalist who asked about his religious


texts: intentions.He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of Melmoth the Wanderer (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, <mask>'s great-uncle). <mask> wrote two long letters to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform. His discussion of the dismissal of Warder Martin for giving biscuits to an anaemic child prisoner repeated the themes of the corruption and degeneration of punishment that he had earlier outlined in The Soul of Man under Socialism. <mask> spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in the seaside village of Berneval-le-Grand in northern France, where he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, narrating the execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, who murdered his wife in a rage at her infidelity. It moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them but rather the poem highlights the brutality of the punishment that all convicts share.<mask> juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves". He adopted the proletarian ballad form and the author was credited as "C33", <mask>'s cell number in Reading Gaol. He suggested that it be published in Reynolds' Magazine, "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes – to which I now belong – for once I will be read by my peers – a new experience for me". It was an immediate roaring commercial success, going through seven editions in less than two years, only after


texts: which "[<mask>]" was added to the title page, though many in literary circles had known <mask> to be the author. It brought him a small amount of money. Although Douglas had been the cause of his misfortunes, he and <mask> were reunited in August 1897 at Rouen. This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men.<mask> was already refusing to meet <mask> or allow him to see their sons, though she sent him money – three pounds a week. During the latter part of 1897, <mask> and Douglas lived together near Naples for a few months until they were separated by their families under the threat of cutting off all funds. <mask>'s final address was at the dingy Hôtel d'Alsace (now known as L'Hôtel), on rue des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. "This poverty really breaks one's heart: it is so sale [filthy], so utterly depressing, so hopeless. Pray do what you can" he wrote to his publisher. He corrected and published An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, the proofs of which, according to Ellmann, show a man "very much in command of himself and of the play" but he refused to write anything else: "I can write, but have lost the joy of writing". He wandered the boulevards alone and spent what little money he had on alcohol.A series of embarrassing chance encounters with hostile English visitors, or Frenchmen he had known in better days, drowned his spirit. Soon <mask> was sufficiently confined to his hotel to joke, on one of his final trips outside, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go". On 12 October 1900 he sent a telegram to Ross: "Terribly weak.

masks:
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Constance Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde


texts:
 Please come". His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found <mask> very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!""I am sure", Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party." Turner was one of the few of the old circle who remained with <mask> to the end and was at his bedside when he died. Death
By 25 November 1900 <mask> had developed meningitis, then called "cerebral meningitis". Robbie Ross arrived on 29 November, sent for a priest, and <mask> was conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church by Fr Cuthbert Dunne, a Passionist priest from Dublin, <mask> having been baptised in the Church of Ireland and having moreover a recollection of Catholic baptism as a child, a fact later attested to by the minister of the sacrament, Fr Lawrence Fox. Fr Dunne recorded the baptism,

 As the voiture rolled through the dark streets that wintry night, the sad story of <mask> was in part repeated to me... Robert Ross knelt by the bedside, assisting me as best he could while I administered conditional baptism, and afterwards answering the responses while I gave Extreme Unction to the prostrate man and recited the prayers for the dying. As the man was in a semi-comatose condition, I did not venture to administer the Holy Viaticum; still I must add that he could be roused and was roused from this state in my presence. When roused, he gave signs of being inwardly conscious...Indeed I was fully satisfied that he understood me when told that I was about to receive him into the Catholic Church and gave him the Last

masks:
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde


texts:
 Sacraments... And when I repeated close to his ear the Holy Names, the Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope and Charity, with acts of humble resignation to the Will of God, he tried all through to say the words after me. <mask> died of meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the disease: Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, <mask>'s grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that <mask>'s meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; <mask>'s physicians, Dr Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (from the prison injury, see above) treated for several years () and made no allusion to syphilis. Burial

<mask> was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, inside the city. His tomb there was designed by Sir Jacob Epstein. It was commissioned by Robert Ross, who asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes, which were duly transferred in 1950. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitalia, which were initially censored by French Authorities with a golden leaf.The genitals have since been vandalised; their current whereabouts are unknown. In 2000, Leon Johnson, a multimedia artist, installed a silver prosthesis to replace them. In 2011, the tomb was cleaned of the many lipstick marks left there by admirers and a glass barrier was installed to prevent further marks or damage. The epitaph is a verse from The


texts:
 Ballad of Reading Gaol,

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn. Posthumous pardon
In 2017, <mask> 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. Honours
On 14 February 1995, <mask> was commemorated with a stained-glass window at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.The memorial, above the monument to Geoffrey Chaucer, was unveiled by his grandson Merlin Holland, while Sir John Gielgud read from the final part of De Profundis and Dame Judi Dench read an extract from The Importance of Being Earnest. In 2014 <mask> 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". The Oscar Wilde Temple, an installation by visual artists McDermott & McGough, opened in 2017 in cooperation with Church of the Village in New York City, then moved to Studio Voltaire in London the next year. Biographies

<mask>'s life has been the subject of numerous biographies since his death. The earliest were memoirs by those who knew him: often they are personal or impressionistic accounts which can be good character sketches, but are sometimes factually unreliable. Frank Harris, his friend and editor, wrote a biography, <mask>: His Life and Confessions (1916); though prone to exaggeration and

masks:
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde


texts: sometimes factually inaccurate, it offers a good literary portrait of <mask>. Lord Alfred Douglas wrote two books about his relationship with <mask>.<mask> and Myself (1914), largely ghost-written by T. W. H. Crosland, vindictively reacted to Douglas's discovery that De Profundis was addressed to him and defensively tried to distance him from <mask>'s scandalous reputation. Both authors later regretted their work. Later, in <mask>: A Summing Up (1939) and his Autobiography he was more sympathetic to <mask>. Of <mask>'s other close friends, Robert Sherard; Robert Ross, his literary executor; and Charles Ricketts variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence. The first more or less objective biography of <mask> came about when Hesketh Pearson wrote <mask> Wilde: His Life and Wit (1946). In 1954 <mask>'s son Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of <mask> Wilde, which recounts the difficulties <mask>'s wife and children faced after his imprisonment. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989.<mask>, a critical study by Arthur Ransome was published in 1912. The book only briefly mentioned <mask>'s life, but subsequently Ransome (and The Times Book Club) were sued for libel by Lord Alfred Douglas. At the High Court in London in April 1913 Douglas lost the libel action after a reading of De Profundis refuted his claims. Richard Ellmann wrote his 1987 biography <mask>, for which he posthumously won a National (US) Book Critics Circle Award in 1988 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. The book was the basis for the 1997 film <mask>, directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry as the title character.

masks:
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar
Wilde
Oscar
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde


texts:
 Neil McKenna's 2003 biography, The Secret Life of <mask> Wilde, offers an exploration of <mask>'s sexuality. Often speculative in nature, it was widely criticised for its pure conjecture and lack of scholarly rigour.Thomas Wright's Oscar's Books (2008) explores <mask>'s reading from his childhood in Dublin to his death in Paris. After tracking down many books that once belonged to <mask>'s Tite Street library (dispersed at the time of his trials), Wright was the first to examine <mask>'s marginalia. In 2018, Matthew Sturgis' Oscar: A Life, was published in London. The book incorporates rediscovered letters and other documents and is the most extensively researched biography of <mask> to appear since 1988. Parisian literati also produced several biographies and monographs on him. André Gide wrote In Memoriam, <mask> and <mask> also features in his journals. Thomas Louis, who had earlier translated books on <mask> into French, produced his own L'esprit d'Oscar Wilde in 1920.Modern books include Philippe Jullian's <mask> Wilde, and L'affaire <mask> Wilde, ou, Du danger de laisser la justice mettre le nez dans nos draps (The Oscar Wilde Affair, or, On the Danger of Allowing Justice to put its Nose in our Sheets) by Odon Vallet, a French religious historian. Selected works

 Ravenna (1878)
 Poems (1881)
 The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888, fairy stories)
 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891, stories)
 A House of Pomegranates (1891, fairy stories)
 Intentions (1891, essays and dialogues on aesthetics)
 The Picture of Dorian Gray (first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine July 1890, in book form in

masks:
Oscar
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar
Oscar


texts:
 1891; novel)
 The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2012. The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891, political essay)
 Lady Windermere's Fan (1892, play)
 A Woman of No Importance (1893, play)
 The Sphinx (1894, poem)
 An Ideal Husband (performed 1895, published 1898; play)
 The Importance of Being Earnest (performed 1895, published 1899; play)
 De Profundis (written 1897, published variously 1905, 1908, 1949, 1962; epistle)
 The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898, poem)

See also
 <mask> Memorial Sculpture

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

 . Further reading

 Ellmann, Richard (1988). <mask>. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. .

 Holland, Merlin & Rupert Hart-Davis (2000) The Complete Letters of <mask>, US edition: Henry Holt and Company LLC, New York. . UK edition: Fourth Estate, London. .

 Mikhail, E. H. (1979). Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections.London: Palgrave Macmillan. Volume 1 . Volume 2 . Sturgis, Matthew (2018). Oscar: A Life. London: Head of Zeus Ltd. . External links

Historical societies
 The Oscar Wilde Society (UK)

Historical notes
 Record of <mask>'s indictment and conviction – official Old Bailey website.Details including court transcriptions of the trials of <mask>
 <mask> in America including The American Lecture Tour 1882
 References to <mask> in historic European newspapers

Archives
 Manuscripts and Letters of <mask> at Morgan Library & Museum
 The Julia Rosenthal Oscar <mask> Collection (and digital collections) at Trinity College Dublin
 <mask> & le fin de siècle at the William Andrews Clark

masks:
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde


texts:
 Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles
 <mask> collection of papers (and digital collections) at the Berg Collection, New York Public Library
 <mask> papers and Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection at the British Library
 <mask> papers at the Free Library of Philadelphia
 <mask> papers at the University of Leeds
 Oscar <mask> papers and Research Guide at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
 Oscar Wilde Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
 The Robert Ross Memorial Collection at University College, Oxford

Online texts by <mask>

 Wilde texts from University College Cork, electronic texts, including a selection of his journalism
 Works by <mask> at The Online Books Page

 Works by <mask> at One More Library
 "Impressions of America"

Images
 The photographs of <mask> taken by Napoleon Sarony in New York, 1882

masks:
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Wilde
Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde


texts:
<mask> (1927–1984) was an educationist and a professor and the first full-time Director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He is also the co-founder, along with Dr. K. Varghese, of Institute of Rural Management, Anand. Early life, education
<mask> was born to a Syrian Anglican family in Kerala as the son of <mask>, who served as India's first Railway Minister and subsequently as India's Finance Minister. Verghese Kurien is his cousin . He was educated at The Doon School, Dehradun and later graduated from University of Oxford with Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Economics. . He began his career at a Calcutta based firm but later moved to the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in 1963 as Professor of Marketing.Influence on IIM Ahmedabad [IIMA] after leaving IIM Calcutta
In 1965 <mask> was invited by noted Indian Institution builder and scientist Dr. Vikram Sarabhai  to join IIMA as its first full-time Director. He was 38 years old at the time and did not have an advanced academic degree. Yet, over the next six years, he set the foundations for an institution that was to grow into a top-ranking management school in India. A number of reasons are attributed to <mask>'s enduring influence on IIMA:
 First, a clear sense of purpose. IIMA's concern, as Mathai put it, was "with the application of knowledge". This meant that the Institute would be involved in teaching, research and consulting. The impact "would be greatest if it were the combined result of all activities", so faculty must engage in all three activities.<mask> saw clearly that to focus merely on business would limit IIMA. It would also expose it to charges of being elitist in its orientation. IIMA's ambit needed to be wider: it would be an institute of management, not just a business school. It would develop expertise in important

masks:
Ravi John Matthai
Ravi
John Mathai
Matthai
Matthai
Matthai


texts:
 sectors, including agriculture. Secondly, <mask>'s conviction that academic activities can flourish only when faculty are given the fullest freedom. In an academic institution, excellence cannot be ordered. It springs forth when people are given the space to grow and to express themselves freely.Thirdly, the idea of a faculty-governed institute where decision-making rests primarily with the faculty and not with the director or the board. An example is the admissions committee that is independent of the director. The mechanism has been crucial in insulating admissions from unhealthy influence. Fourthly, what is, perhaps, <mask>'s greatest bequest to IIMA: the principle of a single term for the director. After six years as director, <mask> announced his decision to step down and stay on as professor. He gave two reasons for doing so:first, leaders of academic institutions tended to use their positions for career advancement at an adverse cost to the institutions;secondly, it was important to establish the principle that the director's position is not hierarchical; he is only first among equals, which was characteristically bold of him, given the cultural milieu prevailing in leading academic institutions at that time. The Jawaja Experiment
In 1975, a few years after stepping down from IIMA's directorship, <mask> decided to test whether corporate management disciplines could be related to gut issues of Indian poverty.He selected Jawaja block which included about 200 villages with a population of approximately 80,000 people in a drought prone district of Rajasthan. The area was then regarded by the government authorities as devoid of any scope for development. Believing that people were the greatest resource for development, <mask> began to work with village communities on issues of livelihood and

masks: Matthai Matthai Matthai Matthai Matthai


texts:
 empowerment in an environment that was (and still remains) among India's most degraded and oppressive. Volunteers from IIMA and the National Institute of Design (NID) joined with local citizens in the search for livelihood options that could be sustained in the face of social, environmental and political challenges. Among them was Raaj Sah, subsequently Professor at the University of Chicago, who worked on the project during and after his MBA studies at IIMA. Among his contributions were that <mask> and he together were the first on the ground and, starting from nothing, they began structuring and implementing the work of poverty alleviation. Languishing skills in weaving and leather work were selected in an effort to develop new opportunities for earning that could be outside the control of local vested interests while remaining rooted in familiar and tested capacities.The Jawaja Experiment thus began with Prof. <mask> leading a small group of volunteers to what seemed a barren patch of land with little resources and even less hope. Forty years later, the Jawaja Leather Association and the Jawaja Weaver's Association, linked as AAJ, continue their struggle for self-reliance and dignity. They have come a long way. The leather workers and weavers have won a degree of economic independence. Their products are reputed in India and in many parts of the world. This experiential learning of running a gross root development project, led to the setting up of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. <mask>, and two of his former IIMA colleagues, Dr.Kamala Chowdhary and  Dr.Michael Halse
]] are credited with conceptualising the need for an independent Institute of Rural Management.The institute was established in Anand, at the express invitation of Dr.Verghese Kurien, his cousin, then Chairman of the National

masks:
Ravi Matthai
Ravi Matthai
Ravi Mathai


texts:
 Dairy Development Board. <mask> was associated in the initial years in various capacities - being a member on the Board, directly in teaching students, apart from informally mentoring the faculty. Honors

National Institute of Design (NID) at Paldi, Ahmedabad, has a <mask> <mask> Design Research Chair for `design innovation for enriching school education, craft sectors and design research`. It focuses on developing a range of design research related projects and activities in this area. The institute library at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand and the Centre for Educational Innovation at IIM Ahmedabad are named after him. In 1986, IIMA established the Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation (RJMCEI), to conduct research and undertake training activities to influence the management of education systems in India. References

External links
 Voice of Ravi Matthai at the IIMA Website
 Remembering <mask>ai - Prof. TT Ram Mohan, IIMA
 Jawaja Leather Association, Rajasthan, India
 The Rural University - Jawaja Experiment in Educational Innovation (Book by <mask>. <mask>)

1927 births
1984 deaths
People from Kerala
Malayali people
Syrian Christians
Indian Christians
The Doon School alumni
Alumni of the University of Oxford
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta faculty
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad faculty
Institute of Rural Management Anand

masks:
Ravi Mathai
Ravi J
Matthai
Ravi Math
Ravi J
Matthai


texts:
<mask> (; October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development. He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Even though it was considered unusual in his era, he decided to study the topic of moral judgment, extending Jean Piaget's account of children's moral development from twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views. <mask>'s work reflected and extended not only Piaget's findings but also the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin. At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: "moral development". In an empirical study using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, <mask> was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.Early life
<mask> was born in Bronxville, New York. He was the youngest of four children of <mask>, a Jewish German entrepreneur, and of his second wife, Charlotte Albrecht, a Christian German chemist. His parents separated when he was four years old and divorced finally when he was fourteen. From 1933 to 1938, <mask> and his three other siblings rotated between their mother and father for six months at a time. In 1938 this rotating custody of the <mask> children was ended, allowing the children to choose the parent with whom they wanted to live. <mask> attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, an elite preparatory school. Kohlberg served in the Merchant Marine at the end of World War II.He worked for a time with the Haganah on a ship smuggling Jewish refugees from Romania through the British Blockade, into Palestine. Captured by the British and held at an internment camp on Cyprus, <mask> escaped with fellow crew members. <mask> was in Palestine during the fighting in 1948 to establish the state of Israel, but refused to participate and focused on nonviolent forms of activism. He also lived in an Israeli kibbutz during this time, until he was able to return to America in 1948. In the same year he enrolled at the University of Chicago. At this time at

masks:
Lawrence Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg
Alfred Kohlberg
Lawrence
Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Kohlberg


texts:
 Chicago it was possible to gain credit for courses by examination, and <mask> earned his bachelor's degree in one year, 1948. He then began study for his doctoral degree in psychology, which he completed at Chicago in 1958.In 1955 while beginning his dissertation, he married Lucille Stigberg, and the couple had two sons, David and Steven. In those early years he read Piaget's work. <mask> found a scholarly approach that gave a central place to the individual's reasoning in moral decision making. At the time this contrasted with the current psychological approaches of behaviorism and psychoanalysis that explained morality as simple internalization of external cultural or parental rules, through teaching using reinforcement and punishment or identification with a parental authority. Career

<mask>'s first academic appointment was at Yale University, as an assistant professor of psychology, 1958–1961. <mask> spent a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, in Palo Alto, California, 1961–1962, and then joined the Psychology Department of the University of Chicago as assistant, then associate professor of psychology and human development, 1962–1967. He held a visiting appointment at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1967–68, and then was appointed Professor of Education and Social Psychology there, beginning 1968, where he remained until his death.Stages of moral development

In his unpublished 1958 dissertation, <mask> wrote what are now known as <mask>'s stages of moral development. These stages are planes of moral adequacy conceived to explain the development of moral reasoning. Created while studying psychology at the University of Chicago, the theory was inspired by the work of Jean Piaget and a fascination with children's reactions to moral dilemmas. <mask> proposed a form of "Socratic" moral education and reaffirmed John Dewey's idea that development should be the aim of education. He also outlined how educators can influence moral development without indoctrination and how public school can be engaged in moral education consistent with the United States Constitution. <mask>'s approach begins with the assumption that humans are intrinsically motivated to explore, and become competent at

masks: Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg


texts: functioning in their environments. In social development, this leads us to imitate role models we perceive as competent and to look to them for validation.Thus our earliest childhood references on the rightness of our and others' actions are adult role models with whom we are in regular contact. <mask> also held that there are common patterns of social life, observed in universally occurring social institutions, such as families, peer groups, structures and procedures for clan or society decision-making, and cooperative work for mutual defense and sustenance. Endeavoring to become competent participants in such institutions, humans in all cultures exhibit similar patterns of action and thought concerning the relations of self, others, and social world. Furthermore, the more one is prompted to imagine how others experience things and imaginatively to take their roles, the more quickly one learns to function well in cooperative human interactions. The sequence of stages of moral development thus corresponds to a sequence of progressively more inclusive social circles (family, peers, community, etc. ), within which humans seek to operate competently. When those groups function well, oriented by reciprocity and mutual care and respect, growing humans adapt to larger and larger circles of justice, care, and respect.Each stage of moral cognitive development is the realization in conscious thought of the relations of justice, care, and respect exhibited in a wider circle of social relations, including narrower circles within the wider. <mask>'s theory holds that moral reasoning, which is the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental constructive stages – each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than the last. Kohlberg suggested that the higher stages of moral development provide the person with greater capacities/abilities in terms of decision making and so these stages allow people to handle more complex dilemmas. In studying these, <mask> followed the development of moral judgment beyond the ages originally studied earlier by Piaget, who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages. Expanding considerably upon this groundwork, it was determined that the process of

masks: Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg


texts:
 moral development was principally concerned with justice and that its development continued throughout the life span, even spawning dialogue of philosophical implications of such research. His model "is based on the assumption of co-operative social organization on the basis of justice and fairness." Kohlberg studied moral reasoning by presenting subjects with moral dilemmas.He would then categorize and classify the reasoning used in the responses, into one of six distinct stages, grouped into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. Each level contains two stages. These stages heavily influenced others and have been utilized by others like James Rest in making the Defining Issues Test in 1979. Moral education
<mask> is most well known among psychologists for his research in moral psychology, but among educators he is known for his applied work of moral education in schools. The three major contributions <mask> made to moral education were the use of Moral Exemplars, Dilemma Discussions, and Just Community Schools. <mask>'s first method of moral education was to examine the lives of moral exemplars who practiced principled morals such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Socrates, and Abraham Lincoln. He believed that moral exemplars' words and deeds increased the moral reasoning of those who watched and listened to them.Kohlberg never tested to see if examining the lives of moral exemplars did in fact increase moral reasoning. Recent research in moral psychology has brought back the value of witnessing moral exemplars in action or learning about their stories. Witnessing the virtuous acts of moral exemplars may not increase moral reasoning, but it has been shown to elicit an emotion known as moral elevation that can increase an individual's desire to be a better person and even has the potential to increase prosocial and moral behavior. Although <mask>'s hypothesis that moral exemplars could increase moral reasoning might be unfounded, his understanding that moral exemplars have an important place in moral education has growing support. Dilemma discussions in schools was another method proposed by Kohlberg to increase moral reasoning. Unlike moral exemplars, Kohlberg tested this method by integrating

masks: Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg


texts:
 moral dilemma discussion into the curricula of school classes in humanities and social studies. Results of this and other studies using similar methods found that moral discussion does increase moral reasoning and works best if the individual in question is in discussion with a person who is using reasoning that is just one stage above their own.The final method Kohlberg used for moral education was known as "just communities". In 1974, <mask> worked with schools to set up democracy-based programs, where both students and teachers were given one vote to decide on school policies. The purpose of these programs were to build a sense of community in schools in order to promote democratic values and increase moral reasoning. <mask>'s idea and development of "just communities" were greatly influenced by his time living in an Israeli kibbutz when he was a young adult in 1948 and when he was doing longitudinal cross-cultural research of moral development in another Israeli kibbutz. Writing
Some of <mask>'s most important publications were collected in his Essays on Moral Development, Vols. I and II, The Philosophy of Moral Development (1981) and The Psychology of Moral Development (1984), published by Harper & Row. Other works published by Kohlgainz or about Kohlberg's theories and research include Consensus and Controversy, The Meaning and Measurement of Moral Development, <mask>'s Approach to Moral Education and Child Psychology and Childhood Education: A Cognitive Developmental View.Critiques
Carol Gilligan, a fellow researcher of <mask>'s in the studies of moral reasoning that led to <mask>'s developmental stage theory, suggested that to make moral judgments based on optimizing concrete human relations is not necessarily a lower stage of moral judgment than to consider objective principles. Postulating that women may develop an empathy-based ethic with a different, but not lower structure than that Kohlberg had described, Gilligan wrote In a Different Voice, a book that founded a new movement of care-based ethics that initially found strong resonance among feminists and later achieved wider recognition. <mask>'s response to Carol Gilligan's criticism was that he agreed with her that there is a care moral orientation that is

masks:
Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Kohlberg
Kohlberg


texts: distinct from a justice moral orientation, but he disagreed with her claim that women scored lower than men on measures of moral developmental stages because they are more inclined to use care orientation rather than a justice orientation. <mask> disagreed with Gilligan's position on two grounds. First, many studies measuring moral development of males and females found no difference between men and women and when differences were found it was attributable to differences in education, work experiences, and role-taking opportunities, but not gender. Second, longitudinal studies of females found the same invariant sequence of moral development as previous studies that were of just males. In other words, Gilligan's criticism of <mask>'s moral development theory was centered on differences between males and females that did not exist.<mask>'s detailed responses to numerous critics can be read in his book Essays on Moral Development: Vol.II. The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages. Another criticism against <mask>'s theory was that it focused too much on reason at the expense of other factors. One problem with <mask>'s focus on reason was that little empirical evidence found a relationship between moral reasoning and moral behavior. <mask> recognized this lack of a relationship between his moral stages and moral behavior. In an attempt to understand this, he proposed two sub-stages within each stage, to explain individual differences within each stage. He then proposed a model of the relationship between moral judgments and moral action.According to Kohlberg, an individual first interprets the situation using their moral reasoning, which is influenced by their moral stage and sub-stage. After interpretation individuals make a deontic choice and a judgment of responsibility, which are both influenced by the stage and sub-stage of the individual. If the individual does decide on a moral action and their obligation to do it, they still need the non-moral skills to carry out a moral behavior. If this model is true then it would explain why research was having a hard time finding a direct relationship between moral reason and moral behavior. Another problem with <mask>'s emphasis on moral

masks: Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg


texts:
 reasoning is growing empirical support that individuals are more likely to use intuitive "gut reactions" to make moral decisions than use reason-based thought. The high use of intuition directly challenges the place of reason in moral experience. This expanding of the moral domain from reason has raised questions that perhaps morality research is entering areas of inquiry that are not considered real morality, which was a concern of Kohlberg when he first started his research.Scholars such as Elliot Turiel and James Rest have responded to <mask>'s work with their own significant contributions. Death
While doing cross-cultural research in Belize in 1971, <mask> contracted a parasitic infection. Due to this, he suffered from extreme abdominal pain. The long-term effects of the infection and the medications took their toll, and <mask>'s health declined as he also engaged in increasingly demanding professional work, including "Just Community" prison and school moral education programs. <mask> sometimes experienced depression as well. On January 19, 1987, <mask> parked at the end of a dead end street in Winthrop, Massachusetts, across from Boston's Logan Airport. He left his wallet with identification on the front seat of his unlocked car and apparently walked into the icy Boston Harbor.His car and wallet were found within a couple of weeks, and his body was recovered some time later, with the late winter thaw, in a tidal marsh across the harbor near the end of a Logan Airport runway. After <mask>'s body was recovered and his death confirmed, former students and colleagues published special issues of scholarly journals to commemorate his contribution to developmental psychology. See also
Heinz dilemma

References

American social psychologists
American educational psychologists
American developmental psychologists
Moral philosophers
American moral psychologists
20th-century psychologists
Harvard University faculty
University of Chicago faculty
Phillips Academy alumni
University of Chicago alumni
Haganah members
Jewish philosophers
American people of German-Jewish descent
People from Bronxville, New York
Suicides in Massachusetts
Suicides by drowning in the United States
1927 births
1987 suicides
United States Merchant Mariners

masks: Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg


texts:
<mask> (born 4 October 1982) is an English football coach and former footballer who works as a goalkeeping coach for Grimsby Town. As a player he was a goalkeeper from 2000 until 2021. He began his career in the Premier League with Middlesbrough although he failed to make a first team appearance but would notably go on to have three spells with Darlington between 2002 and 2012. He also played for Gateshead, Scunthorpe United, Rochdale, Wrexham and Forest Green Rovers before joining Grimsby in 2018 where he combined playing duties as James McKeown's number two with coaching the clubs goalkeepers. Playing career

Middlesbrough
<mask> was born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire and signed as a professional on 7 July 2000 for his hometown team after progressing through their youth system. He had a successful loan spell at Gateshead during the tail end of the 2001–02 season, followed by a brief period at Darlington on loan in 2002 after Mick Tait brought him in during a keeping crisis. He played in only one game, a 1–1 draw against Torquay United.In August 2003 he was sent to Scunthorpe United on loan where he stayed for three months and made 10 appearances. He finally left Middlesbrough in the summer of 2004, moving to Darlington on a permanent basis. He never appeared in Middlesbrough's first team. Darlington
He was brought to Darlington by David Hodgson in August 2004. With the retirement of goalkeeping legend Andy Collett, the club only had two goalkeepers on their books in Michael Price and youth team player Jack Norton. <mask> was a target for Hodgson after he heard that Middlesbrough were releasing the youngster. Initially it was thought <mask> would be number two to Price, but performances during pre-season meant that <mask> got the

masks:
Samuel Ian Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell
Russell


texts:
 nod.Assistant manager Mark Proctor said that both Price and <mask> were of virtual equal quality but Russsell's distribution was slightly better. In the opening game of the 2004–05 season <mask> made his mark with a superb performance which earned him the man of the match. His superb saves kept Darlington in the game and meant Darlington hung on to an opening day victory. He was ever-present in the first team in the 2004–05 season, and signed a new two-year contract in July 2005. He seemed to have established himself as the number one until just before the start of the 2007–08 season until failed to agree terms with then manager Dave Penny and <mask> left to go to Rochdale and left Darlington in June 2007 after three years in which he made 107 league appearances. Rochdale
In July 2007 he signed for Rochdale, making his first start for the club in the Football League Trophy second round tie against Bury in October 2007. Following an injury to regular keeper James Spencer, <mask> was next called upon in the FA Cup defeat at Southend United.He retained his place in the side and in December 2007, signed a contract until the end of the season having been on non-contract terms. He broke a finger in the 2–1 defeat at Lincoln City in February 2008 and was expected to be out of action until April. In the 2008–09 season <mask> was handed the number one shirt for Rochdale. He had made some important saves for Rochdale that season, however he made the occasional mistake, such as scoring an own goal in the Rochdale–Bury derby, and slipping in a late equaliser by Jamie Ward against Chesterfield despite a Tom Kennedy late winner. In February he was replaced by Blackburn loanee Frank Fielding after Spencer was loaned out to Chester City. Wrexham
After

masks: Russell Russell Russell Russell Russell


texts:
 being released by Rochdale at the end of the season, <mask> signed for Conference National side Wrexham after impressing on trial. Return to Darlington
In May 2010 he agreed to rejoin Darlington on a one-year contract.He became their regular goalkeeper, and played at Wembley as they beat Mansfield Town to win the FA Trophy. He signed a one-year contract extension, but when the club suffered financial difficulties and failed to pay the players, he submitted his 14-day notice at the end of December and left the club for fellow Conference club Forest Green Rovers in January 2012. Forest Green Rovers
<mask> made his Forest Green debut on 21 January 2012 in a 0–0 draw against Newport County. In his first eight Forest Green performances he saved four consecutive penalty kicks. He made his hundredth league appearance for the club in a 2–1 win over Grimsby Town on 18 March 2014. In March 2014, he signed a contract extension to remain with the club. A run of 144 consecutive league appearances for Forest Green was brought to an end on 21 February 2015 when he was replaced by Steve Arnold for a 3–0 win over AFC Telford United.On 4 May 2015, it was announced that he was leaving Forest Green after his contract had come to an end. Gateshead
In June 2015, <mask> joined National League side Gateshead, returning to a club where over a decade earlier he had spent time on loan. Return to Forest Green Rovers
On 1 July 2016, it was announced that <mask> had returned to former club Forest Green Rovers on a two-year deal. He made his 150th league appearance for the club in a 4–1 away win over Maidstone United on 27 August 2016. Between 17 September 2016 and 29 October 2016, he kept a run of seven National League clean sheets, until Oliver Hawkins header in a 1–1

masks: Russell Russell Russell Russell


texts:
 draw with Dagenham & Redbridge saw him concede and narrowly miss out on the league record of eight consecutive clean sheets set by Alan Julian for Stevenage. <mask> appeared in every single of minute of Forest Green's 2016-17 campaign, as he helped the club secure promotion to the Football League for the first time in their history with a 3-1 National League play-off final win against Tranmere Rovers at Wembley Stadium. He was rewarded with a new one-year contract in June 2017 for Forest Green's first season in League Two.He was released by Forest Green at the end of the 2017–18 season. Coaching career

Grimsby Town
On 9 July 2018 he joined Grimsby Town as the club's new player / goalkeeper coach. <mask> retired from playing at the end of the 2020–21 season but remained Paul Hurst's first team goalkeeping coach. Career statistics

References

External links

1982 births
Living people
Footballers from Middlesbrough
English footballers
Association football goalkeepers
English Football League players
National League (English football) players
Northern Premier League players
Middlesbrough F.C. players
Gateshead F.C. players
Darlington F.C. players
Scunthorpe United F.C.players
Rochdale A.F.C. players
Wrexham A.F.C. players
Forest Green Rovers F.C. players
Grimsby Town F.C. players
Grimsby Town F.C. non-playing

masks: Russell Russell


texts:
<mask> (6 July 1885 – 17 July 1945) was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II who commanded the 16th Army (as a Generaloberst) and later the massive Army Group Centre. During World War I, <mask> served as an infantry officer and was retained in the postwar army of the Weimar Republic. He steadily rose in seniority and by 1936 was a general and commander of the 23rd Infantry Division. During the invasion of Poland, he commanded VIII Army Corps. In 1940, he was appointed commander of the 16th Army; he led it during the 1940 Battle of France and Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. By October 1943, <mask> was a field marshal and commander of Army Group Centre. He was dismissed in June 1944 after the collapse of his command during the Red Army's Operation Bagration.He was later the commander of Army Group Northwest in the final months of the war and died as a prisoner of war in England. Early life and World War I
<mask> was born on 6 July 1885 at Essen in the Ruhr district of Germany. In 1904, having graduated from the Gross Lichterfelde Cadet Academy, he joined the Imperial Army as a Fahnenjunker (officer cadet). He was initially posted to the Westphalian 13th Infantry Regiment but was later assigned to the 57th Infantry Regiment, in which he was commissioned a Leutnant (second lieutenant). In 1913, he was promoted to Oberleutnant (first lieutenant) and received further training at the War Academy. During World War I, <mask> served mostly on the Western Front, initially as a company commander. Within months of the beginning of the war, he had been awarded both the first and second classes of the Iron Cross.In 1915, he was promoted to Hauptmann (captain) and then appointed a battalion commander in the 56th Infantry Regiment. He fought in several battles across the Artois, Flanders, and Champagne sectors of the front. He was awarded

masks:
Ernst Bernhard Wilhelm Busch
Busch
Busch
Busch
Busch


texts:
 the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords in 1917 and the following year received the Pour le Mérite. Interwar period
After the war, <mask> was retained in the postwar Reichsheer. He mostly served in a series of staff positions for the next several years, including a period as Inspector of Transport Troops and as a battalion commander in the 9th Infantry Regiment. An ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler, he received a series of rapid promotions from 1933. He soon held the rank of oberst (colonel) and was commander of 9th Infantry Regiment, which was based at Potsdam, and in 1935 was promoted to generalmajor and given command of the 23rd Infantry Division.During the tensions of 1938 between Hitler and the two senior officers in the Wehrmacht, Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg and Generaloberst Werner von Fritsch, <mask> sided with Hitler. At this stage of his career, <mask> was a General der Infanterie (General of Infantry) and was commander of [[Wehrkreis|Wehrkreis VIII]]. World War II

Invasion of Poland and France
On the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, <mask> was commander of the VIII Army Corps which participated in the invasion of Poland as part of the 14th Army. It captured the city of Krakow, reached the Vistula River and advanced as far as Lviv. During the campaign in Poland, he was twice awarded the Clasp to the Iron Cross. The following year <mask> led the 16th Army, which consisted of 13 infantry divisions, during the Battle of France and covered the left flank of General der Panzertruppe Heinz Guderian's XIX Panzer Corps. During the later stages of the fighting in France, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross  and this was followed by a promotion to Generaloberst on 19 July 1940.Once the campaign in France was completed, <mask>'s 16th Army remained in the country until early 1941, when it was

masks: Busch Busch Busch Busch Busch Busch


texts:
 transferred to Poland. Invasion of the Soviet Union
When Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, commenced in late June 1941, the 16th Army controlled seven infantry divisions. Assigned to Army Group North, and operating on its southern flank during the advance into the Baltic States and Russia, it captured Staraya Russa in August. By December, the 16th Army had been considerably expanded, and <mask> now had nine infantry divisions along with two motorised divisions, with one more in reserve, under his command. When the Red Army began its winter offensive in January 1942, several parts of his army became encircled and Staraya Russa was nearly lost. <mask> had to resort to his reserve to ensure his forces could hold onto the city. The commander of Army Group North, Generaloberst Georg von Küchler, became dissatisfied with <mask>'s performance and wanted to relieve him of command.Permission to do so was denied. The Red Army offensive shifted focus towards Army Group Centre which relieved the pressure on the 16th Army. <mask> was able to relieve his encircled troops although it took several months and required his army to be reinforced. For the remainder of 1942 and into 1943 the 16th Army's sector was relatively quiet, with the Red Army directing its offensive operations against the 18th Army, which was besieging Leningrad. On 1 February 1943, <mask> was promoted to Field Marshal but this owed more to Hitler's patronage than to his leadership of the 16th Army. Six months later, he received the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross he had been awarded during the campaign in France. On 28 October 1943, Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, the commander of Army Group Centre, was injured in a vehicle accident and <mask> was named as his replacement.Army Group Centre controlled 76 divisions across four field armies. Fifty-four of these divisions were infantry,