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<mask> (born May 21, 1968) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach at Purdue University. <mask> also served as the head football coach at Eastern Michigan University from 2009 to 2013, compiling a record of 11–46. Playing career and education
From 1987 to 1990, <mask> played college football at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated in 1991 with a degree in communications. In 1995, he received his master's degree in education administration from Arizona State University. Coaching career

Assistant coach (1992–2008)
<mask> has served as an assistant coach at Mt.San Antonio College, Northern Arizona University, San Diego State University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and University of Louisville. He coached the defensive secondary at Michigan from 2003 through 2005. In February 2006, he accepted a position on the coaching staff of the NFL's Chicago Bears. However, Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr persuaded <mask> to stay on as the defensive coordinator after Jim Herrmann, who coordinated Michigan's defense from 1997 to 2005, accepted a position with the NFL's New York Jets. In the 2006 season, <mask> coached only safeties, rather than the entire defensive secondary, to allow him to concentrate more fully on his responsibilities as defensive coordinator. <mask>'s defense showed great success against most run-heavy teams in the Big Ten Conference and allowed the fewest rushing yards per game in the nation. With Carr's retirement at the end of the 2007 season, <mask>, along with all of the assistant coaches at Michigan except for running backs coach Fred Jackson, was fired by incoming head coach Rich Rodriguez.English interviewed for the head coaching vacancies at the University of Arkansas and at Michigan before accepting the defensive coordinator duties for Steve Kragthorpe at the University of Louisville. Eastern Michigan (2009–2013)
English was hired as head coach at Eastern Michigan in December 2008. At the time of his hiring by Eastern Michigan, he was one of six African American head coaches at Football Bowl Subdivision teams; the others (and their teams at the time) were Turner Gill (Buffalo), Kevin Sumlin (Houston), Mike Locksley (New Mexico), Randy Shannon (University of Miami), and Mike Haywood (Miami University) . Eastern Michigan compiled a 0–12 record in 2009. An article on ESPN.com ranked the Eagles the second-worst team in NCAA FBS football. The Eagles posted a 2–10 record in 2010, <mask>'s second season as head coach, losing all four non-conference games and stretching their losing streak to 18 games before winning an overtime game at Ball State and another game at Buffalo in the latter part of the season. 2011 saw the Eagles achieve their best season in 17 years.They finished the season 6–6, 4–4 in MAC play to finish in a tie for fourth place in the West Division. Despite being 6–6, the Eagles were not bowl eligible because two of their wins came against FCS teams. The 6 wins were the most wins the school had since 1995 when they also had 6 wins. Following the season, <mask> was named the Mid American Conference Coach of the Year. Following the success of the 2011 season, media outlets speculated that <mask> could be a candidate for head coaching openings at BCS schools. Based on his west coast recruiting background and Big Ten coaching experience, the schools most often mentioned were Illinois, Arizona State, and Washington State. <mask> returned to the Eagles as head coach for the 2012 season.Eastern Michigan posted a 2–10 record in 2012, with their wins coming against Army (48–38) and Western Michigan (29–23). EMU faced a difficult schedule, with 7 losses to teams that participated in a post season bowl game. Additionally, the Eagles lost to (FCS) #14 ranked Illinois State by a score of 31–14 in the second week of the season. <mask> was abruptly fired on November 8, 2013 — less than 24 hours before the Eagles' game against Western Michigan. Later that day, The Detroit News revealed that English had been fired after school officials obtained a tape of a tirade <mask> delivered to his team during an October team meeting. The speech was laden with expletives ("shitbird" was especially plentiful), and included at least one homophobic slur. On November 9, athletic director Heather Lyke confirmed the existence of the tape and condemned it as "wholly inappropriate" and "absolutely unacceptable."<mask> subsequently apologized, admitting that he had "lost my poise," but hoped to be able to coach again. Career after Eastern Michigan (2014–present)
In 2014, English joined the Cleveland Browns' internship program under a Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship. <mask> also spent more time with his family and in church. <mask> returned to coaching on February 9, 2016 as defensive coordinator at San Jose State under <mask>. On February 2, 2017, <mask> joined Dan Mullen's staff at Mississippi State as safeties coach. Head coaching record

References

External links
 Purdue profile
 Eastern Michigan profile

1968 births
Living people
American football safeties
Arizona State Sun Devils football coaches
California Golden Bears football players
Eastern Michigan Eagles football coaches
Florida Gators football coaches
Louisville Cardinals football coaches
Michigan Wolverines football coaches
Mississippi State Bulldogs football coaches
Mt. SAC Mounties football coaches
Northern Arizona Lumberjacks football coaches
Purdue Boilermakers football coaches
San Diego State Aztecs football coaches
San Jose State Spartans football coaches
High school football coaches in California
Sportspeople from Pomona, California
Coaches of American football from California
Players of American football from California
African-American coaches of American football
African-American players of American football
20th-century African-American sportspeople
21st-century African-American people

masks:
Ronald Everett English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
Ron Caragher
English


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<mask> (, ; born 25 March 1973) is a Serbian international association football (soccer) assistant referee. In 2011, he received the highest possible FIFA Assistant Referee license. As a part of the Milorad Mažić referee team, <mask> officiated at 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, numerous matches in the UEFA Champions League, including 2018 UEFA Champions League Final, UEFA Europa League, 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup Final, 2016 UEFA Euro in France, 2016 UEFA Super Cup, 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Turkey, as well as number of appearances in the biggest matches organized by Football Association of Serbia, Chinese Football Association, Qatar Football Association, Saudi Arabian Football Federation, and Egyptian Football Association as Assistant Referee and Assistant Video Assistant Referee (AVAR) . <mask> was selected as The Best Assistant Referee 5 years in a row by the Football Association of Serbia and he is a holder of numerous prestigious awards for a professional football refereeing, both home and abroad. He is married and has two sons. Refereeing career
He started his referee career in 1994 and after only three years received the National Referee badge. He spent 10 years (1999-2009) in the First Serbian Division.The little-known fact is that during that time he refereed 126 games with a whistle in his hands (i.e. as a center official) and even made his debut in the Serbian Super League in 2004. In 2009 he switched to being an Assistant referee and made it to the international FIFA Assistant Referee list a short time after. He later mentioned in one of his interviews that it was the most important decision in his life. He joined the Milorad Mažić team in 2012 and together with FIFA Assistant Referee Milovan Ristić, became an indispensable team member. He praised Mažić and his vision for the team and knew that they would achieve great things together as a team, not without all the hard work that comes with it. 2013 FIFA U20 World Cup Turkey
The whole team moved to the UEFA Elite category and were invited to the 2013 FIFA U20 World Cup in Turkey, where they were in charge of  two games: Columbia –Australia 1-1 (Hüseyin Avni Aker Stadium, Trabzon, 22 June 2013) and Nigeria-Uruguay 1–2 at Türk Telekom Arena, Istanbul on 2 July 2013.2014 FIFA World Cup
As a part of the Mažić referee team, he refereed the Germany vs. Portugal group stage match in Salvador da Bahia, in which Pepe headbutted Thomas Muller and was sent off and Germany won 4–0. The second game between Argentina vs. Iran (1-0) was their last at this championship. There was a lot of talk in the football and referee circles about Pablo Zabaleta’s tackle on Ashkan Dejagah in Argentina’s box after the 58’ minute. This World Cup was the team's first and their greatest educational moment. 2014–2016
Having been a part of the referee team in charge of the UEFA Champions League round-of-16 return leg in March 2015 between Borussia Dortmund and Juventus, and the quarter-final first leg between Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid, they later refereed the Europa League semi-final return leg FC Dnipro vs SSC Napoli. In July 2015 the team was asked by the Egyptian FA to referee the country's biggest league Cairo derby between cross-town rivals Al Ahly and Zamalek. They were appointed in February 2016 to referee the UEFA Europa League knockout match between Manchester United and Liverpool at the Old Trafford Stadium in front of 75 180 people.UEFA Euro 2016
UEFA Referees Committee appointed the Serbian referee team led by Mažić, to run matches at the Euro 2016 in France. The Serbian referee team was firstly appointed to referee the Republic of Ireland vs Sweden group stage match at the Stade de France in Paris on 13 June, which ended 1–1. They refereed the match on June, 17 in group D between Spain and Turkey at the Alianz Riviera in Nice which Spain won 3–0. In the next phase of the Cup, the Serbian team was appointed to run the Round of 16 match between Hungary and Belgium at the Stadium Municipal in Toulouse, which the Belgians won 4–0. 2016 UEFA Super Cup
Fresh from officiating at UEFA EURO 2016, as a result of a great form, UEFA Referees Committee appointed Mažić, Ristić, and <mask> to officiate the most prestigious assignment of their careers (as of that year). The 2016 UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid CF and Sevilla FC at the Lerkendal Stadium in Trondheim, Norway, that Real won 3:2 after extra time.<mask> referred to that match as one of the most demanding in his career, where the whole team had to make some big and hard decisions, like the 90th-minute goal from a “dead angle” that

Real brought to extra time. All of them had to be made without the Video Assistant Referee (it wasn't until next year when VAR was used in by UEFA).2017 FIFA Confederations Cup Final
FIFA also gave credits to this referee team with the privilege and the responsibility to officiate the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup Final between Chile and Germany, played in Saint Petersburg on 2 July 2017. This was their first final with help of the VAR, which undoubtedly helped with a moment of controversy as Gonzalo Jara was judged to have elbowed Timo Werner in the face. 2018 Champions League finals
On 26 May 2018, Mažić, Ristić and <mask> refereed the 2018 UEFA Champions League Final between Liverpool and Real Madrid in Kyiv. As an Assistant referee, <mask> had an important call - a double offside in the 43rd minute. A retired UEFA elite match official referee Eduardo Iturralde González in one of his interviews on the Spanish radio commented that the call was entirely because Benzema was slightly offside and so was Cristiano Ronaldo. This game symbolized the greatest success in the team's career, as <mask> reflected on in one of his interviews. It was the result of 25 years of hard work.The referee team's performance was praised by Pierluigi Collina, the legend in the football referee circles and the head of UEFA referee committee at the time. 2018 FIFA World Cup
As a crown of the team's career, The FIFA Referees Committee has selected Milorad Mažić, Milovan Ristić, and <mask> <mask> to be in the pool of 36 referees and 63 assistant referees for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. They were in charge of games between South Korea vs Mexico 1-2 (Rostov-on-Don, June 23), Senegal vs Colombia 0-1 (Samara, June 28), and quarterfinal between Brazil and Belgium 1-2 (Kazan, July 6). They were the first candidate for the final match, but since Croatia played in the finals, FIFA tried to avoid any controversy with the Serbian referee team doing this game. Many Croatian fans and sports journalists posted on social media and in various sports news outlets that they wouldn't mind seeing Mažić, Ristić, and Đurđević in the Final and would choose them over Pitana’s team. Despite the fact that the team didn’t get to referee the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final, they were unofficially proclaimed by football fans and professionals one of the best refereeing teams of the tournament. Last games as the team (2018-2019)
The next big game was on October 16th, 2018 at Stade de France as France team came back from a goal down to beat Germany 2-1 in the UEFA Nations League.Their appearance in Champions League play-offs was on where Benfica played with PAOK FC (1:1). In the group stage they were in charge of PSV Eindhoven vs Inter Milan (1:2), Manchester United FC vs. Juventus FC (0:1) and FC Barcelona vs Tottenham Hotspur FC (1:1) on December 11th 2018, what was their last CL game. On February 14th, 2019 Mažić, Ristić, and Đurđević were in charge of the Round of 32 game UEFA Europa League FC Zürich vs SSC Napoli (1:3), which was their final international appearance as a team. At the beginning of 2019 Mažić continued his professional career as the Chinese Football Association (CFA) referee, while Ristić and <mask> became a part of the Saudi Professional League. VAR - Video Assistant Referee
<mask>  did around 30 games for the Saudi Professional League, some as an Assistant Referee, and some as a Video Assistant Referee (IFAB certified VAR). Since 2021 <mask> has been on the list of the FIFA VMO (Video Match Officials). As a part of the Football Association of Serbia's new implementation of video technology, he did more than ten matches as a Video Assistant Referee.Serbian Eternal Derby
<mask>  participated in 25 “Eternal Derbies” (a match between Red Star Belgrade and FK Partizan) during his 12-year career as a Serbian SuperLiga referee. It's the match that holds a special place in any Serbian football fan's, player's, and official's heart, because of the long-standing rivalry between the two teams and the difficulty to officiate it that comes with it. Referee education and humanitarian work
<mask> is actively involved in various referee mentorship and talent development programs in Serbia. Recently he initiated and spearheaded a campaign backed by the Football Association of Serbia to raise funds and help Serbian health system in the current fight against COVID-19 pandemic. References

1973 births
Serbian football referees
Living people
2018 FIFA World Cup referees

masks:
Dalibor Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Dalibor
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević
Đurđević


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NJC (born <mask>, 1978, Ipswich) is a British music producer. Music career
NJC had his debut in 2003 with Dispatches  on British drum and bass label L.Plates. It was the guidance of British drum and bass don Digital aka Steve Carr (Drum and Bass producer and DJ) that gave <mask> his first opportunity to release and develop his music. Over a three-year period <mask> showcased his ability to fuse different genres like bhangra, reggae, hip hop and live music into his drum and bass productions, garnering him the support from several DJ's including Steve Lamacq, Bobby Friction  & Nihal, Digital, Storm, Bailey, DJ Flight, Zinc and Breakage to name a few. Sativa Records was formed in 2003  by YT, NJC, Digital and Gordon Mulrain who later became the fourth member of Sativa Records collective. In 2004 Clarkson & Mulrain joined together as NJC & Innerheart, and went on to produce 7 of the 13 tracks on Straight Outta Britain  the debut album of UK reggae artist YT  (Mark Hull, nicknamed Whitey). <mask> was also introduced to 'Ola' from the then Stage One Music publishing company in London.<mask> put together a sampler of several productions from various genres and sent over to Stage One Music for consideration. In the winter of 2003 he signed a 3-year publishing deal with Stage One Music. Stage One Music split and Ola founded 'The DML' (The Dance Music Library) which is part of JAL (Just Another Label) for which <mask> still writes today. At the start of 2004 <mask> was commissioned to write a theme tune for PlayStation 2 game Dog's Life. The track was used on the cover-mount DVD in Europe for Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine. The game Dog's Life was later released around the world and Nat's track was reported to have been used in the Southern Hemisphere for terrestrial TV adverts. Later Sony BMG agreed to an out of court settlement with Stage One Music, as they had not obtained the relevant license to use the song.In 2007 NJC left Sativa Records to pursue his own solo projects but continued to write music for library and production companies worldwide. Ambiel Music was launched as a record label in 2007 by NJC and Gordon Mulrain. In January 2009 NJC was approached by west London-based trance producer and DJ Chris Grabiec. After a number of studio sessions together they established an outlet label for Grabiec's releases. Dance Regime was launched in the winter of 2009 with Grabiec's return to music production, with the single, Guardian Angel. In the spring of 2011 NJC completed dub step pop EP, The Industry, with Solihull-based singer Charlie O'Neill  for Extreme Music (Sony/ATV Music Publishing), the EP was later signed to new label venture Hype Music, which is a partnership between Extreme Music and MTV Networks in the US. The summer of 2011 saw NJC release his first Drum and Bass single in over 5 years, the free download single Cascades features bass player and longtime musical collaborator Mr Lee (The Marvelous).Many of NJC's productions have been used across all major territories around the world in many mainstream television programs and adverts including Celebrity Big Brother, Hollyoaks, MTV's Jersey Shore & Geordie Shore, Made In Chelsea, MasterChef, Skunked TV, Fifth Gear, The Really Wild Show, America's Next Top Model, Miami Ink and CSI: NY. NJC continues to build his roster and is focussed on the success of his artists and the music they produce. He currently works with Deckajam, Blox, Cosha Don, The Decadent Futurists, Chris Grabiec, Voodoo Browne, Laura Bayston and Spencer Lee Horton developing music for commercial release and licensing. At the start of 2013 NJC officially launched his side project Blox, an outlet for his experimentations with the artists and musicians that pass through his studio. The debut Blox single "Crazytown" (feat. Spencer Lee Horton and Laura Bayston) was released on 11/11/13 through his own imprint Ambiel Music. After a turn of events in 2014, NJC took his career back under his own control and ramped up the output through his imprint, Ambiel Music.It was a chance meeting with Andy Lysandrou (Ice Cream Records, beat1) whilst working with Electronic band DeckaJam that he ended up becoming one of the remix artists for the newly formed beat1, a specialist radio and DJ plugging service. This is where NJC conceived his latest AKA, Carpe Diem, whilst remixing the new artists that come through the books. Along with remixing, NJC  also offered his web knowledge and app development skills to the team and soon became the main brains behind the content delivery application used by the registered DJ's. Discography

Studio albums
 Straight Outta Britain (2006, Hiptones/Sativa) Role: Producer, vocal producer, mix engineer, composer. Artist album of YT - Retail CD, Double 12" Vinyl and Digital downloads
 Real Musician (2007, Sativa Records) Role: Executive producer, producer, composer. Artist album of Bongo Chilli - Retail CD and Digital downloads
 Substance & Rhythms (2007, Unsigned) Role: Executive producer, producer, vocal producer, mix engineer. Unreleased album of British band The Marvelous
 Pride and Honour (2011, Dance Regime / Ambiel Music) Role: Co-producer, vocal producer, mix engineer.Debut album of Chris Grabiec
 Browne Saucery (2011, Ambiel Music) Role: Executive producer, producer, vocal producer, mix engineer, composer. Debut album of Voodoo Browne

Selected singles
 Dispatches/Feelz Good (2003, L.Plates) NJC Feat Shelley Dee. Genre: Drum and Bass. 12" Vinyl - Debut
 Shakedown/Never Too Late (2006, Unsigned) Role: Producer, vocal producer, mix engineer, engineer. Genre: Indie Rock. Limited run white label CD. Selected compilations
 Hogaya Hai Tujh Ko (Feel the Buzz) - Streets of Bollywood 2 - Feat YT (2008, Moviebox) Retail CD and Digital downloads.This single was also played by John Peel on one of his last radio shows on BBC Radio 1. Nu Steppa - DJ Digital and Nat Clarxon Remix on One Drop East (2003, EMI Australia), Double edition remix CD album. Selected remixes
 Loving You (Ole Ole Ole) (2002, Edel Records) - Brian Harvey and The Refugee Crew (NJC & Danny J) - White label
 Longtime - Salmonella Dub (2005, EMI Australia) - Sativa Records Remix Feat YT - CD
 Let's Play - Cherrybytes (2011, 100% Records/Cherrybyte) - NJC Remix - Download E.P. 24 Hours - Otis ft. Ayo Beats, Flirta D (Beat1UK) 2015
 Not Enough Carpe Diem Remix - Kit Rice (White Label - Beat1UK) 2015

Production music
 Industry (2011, Hype Music/MTV Networks) Charlie O'Neill. Role: Executive producer, producer, mix engineer, composer
 No Stoppin' Me NJC & Sun-Me | Teen Wolf Mid-Season 3 Part.2 Trailer Music (2014 Scene: Mid-Season 3 Part.2 Trailer)

References

External links
 Official website
 NJC on Discogs
  on Facebook
  on Twitter
 Ambiel Music Label
 NJC Music on YouTube

1978 births
Living people
British record producers
English record producers

masks:
Nathaniel James Clarkson
Clarkson
Clarkson
Clarkson
Clarkson
Clarkson
Clarkson


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<mask>'<mask> (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46. <mask>'s parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young <mask> learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, <mask> read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin.After university, <mask> moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, <mask> became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew <mask> to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, <mask> produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, <mask> prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of <mask>'s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused <mask> to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.Early life

<mask> was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College), the second of three children born to an Anglo-Irish couple: Jane, née Elgee and Sir <mask>. <mask> was two years younger than his brother, William (Willie) <mask>. <mask> was a niece (by marriage) of the novelist, playwright and clergyman Charles Maturin (1780 – 1824), who may have influenced her own literary career. She had distant Italian ancestry, and under the pseudonym "Speranza" (the Italian word for 'hope'), she wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848; she was a lifelong Irish nationalist. <mask> read the Young Irelanders' poetry to <mask> and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Her interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece and Rome in her home. <mask> was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland.He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore. A renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the city's poor at the rear of Trinity College Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road. On his father's side <mask> was descended from a Dutchman, Colonel <mask>, who went to Ireland with King William of Orange's invading army in 1690, and numerous Anglo-Irish ancestors. On his mother's side, <mask>'s ancestors included a bricklayer from County Durham, who emigrated to Ireland sometime in the 1770s. <mask> was baptised as an infant in St. Mark's Church, Dublin, the local Church of Ireland (Anglican) church. When the church was closed, the records were moved to the nearby St. Ann's Church, Dawson Street. Davis Coakley mentions a second baptism by a Catholic priest, Father Prideaux Fox, who befriended <mask>'s mother circa 1859.According to Fox's testimony in Donahoe's Magazine in 1905, <mask> would visit his chapel in Glencree, County Wicklow, for Mass and would take her sons with her. She asked Father Fox in this period to baptise her sons. Fox described it in this way:
I am not sure if she ever became a Catholic herself but it was not long before she asked me to instruct two of her children, one of them being the future erratic genius, <mask>. After a few weeks I baptized these two children, Lady <mask> herself being present on the occasion. In addition to his two full siblings, <mask> had three half siblings, who were born out of wedlock before the marriage of his father: Henry Wilson, born in 1838 to one woman, and Emily and <mask>, born in 1847 and 1849, respectively, to a second woman. Sir William acknowledged paternity of his illegitimate or "natural" children and provided for their education, arranging for them to be reared by his relatives rather than with his legitimate children in his family household with his wife. In 1855, the family moved to No.1 Merrion Square, where <mask>'s sister, Isola Francesca Emily <mask> was born 2 April 1857. She was named in tribute to Iseult of Ireland, wife of Mark of Cornwall and lover of the Cornish knight, Sir Tristan. She shared the name Francesca with her mother while Emily was the name of her maternal aunt. <mask> was very close to her and grief struck when she died at the age of nine of a febrile illness. Isola lit up their lives like "a golden ray of sunshine dancing about our home. The <mask>s' new home was larger. With both his parents' success and delight in social life, the house soon became the site of a "unique medical and cultural milieu".Guests at their salon included Sheridan Le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt, William Rowan Hamilton and Samuel Ferguson. Until he was nine, <mask> was educated at home, where a French nursemaid and a German governess taught him their languages. He joined his brother Willie at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, which he attended from 1864 to 1871. At Portora, although he was not as popular as his older brother, <mask> impressed his peers with the humorous and inventive school stories he told. Later in life he claimed that his fellow students had regarded him as a "prodigy" for his ability to speed read, claiming that he could read two facing pages simultaneously and consume a three-volume book in half an hour, retaining enough information to give a basic account of the plot. He excelled academically, particularly in the subject of Classics, in which he ranked fourth in the school in 1869. His aptitude for giving oral translations of Greek and Latin texts won him multiple prizes, including the Carpenter Prize for Greek Testament.He was one of only three students at Portora to win a Royal School scholarship to Trinity in 1871. Until his early twenties, <mask> summered at the villa, Moytura House, which his father had built in Cong, County Mayo. There the young <mask> and his brother Willie played with George Moore. Isola died at age nine of meningitis. <mask>'s poem "Requiescat" is written to her memory:

"Tread lightly, she is nearUnder the snow
Speak gently, she 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 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 "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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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> 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 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 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 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 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: 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 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

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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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". 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

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 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 <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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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