Who is Oscar Wilde

Constance Wilde (1858 ? April 7, 1898), born Constance Mary Lloyd, was the wife of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the mother of his two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. The daughter of Horace Lloyd, a barrister, and Adelaide Atkinson Lloyd, she married Wilde on May 29, 1884, and had both her sons within the next two years.The Official Web Site of Oscar Wilde In 1888 she published a book based on children's stories she had heard from her grandmother, called There Was Once.[http://www.ilab.org/db/detail.php?lang=ru&membernr=1815&ordernr=8000576 (Victorian Colorplate); There was Once-Grandma's Stories by Mrs. Oscar (Constance) Wilde with colour pictures by John Lawson] She and her husband were involved in the dress reform movement.Wilde: The making of the motion picture Wilde

It is unknown at what point Constance became aware of her husband's homosexual relationships. In 1891 she met his lover Lord Alfred Douglas when Wilde brought Douglas to their home for a visit. It was around this time that Wilde was living more in hotels than at their home in Tite Street and since the birth of their second son they had become sexually estranged. It is claimed that on one occasion, when warning his sons about naughty boys who made their mamas cry, Wilde's sons asked him what happened to absent papas who made mamas cry. Nevertheless, by all accounts, they still remained on good terms.Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman, published in 1987

By 1895 she was incapable of ignorance on the subject, as Oscar was tried and imprisoned for "gross indecency", or homosexual acts.The Trials of Oscar Wilde

After Wilde's imprisonment, Constance changed her and her sons' last name to Holland to disassociate themselves from Wilde's scandal.The Incomparable Oscar Wilde The couple never divorced and though Constance visited Oscar in prison so she could tell him the news of his mother's death in person,Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. 497-98. she also forced him to give up his parental rights and later, after he had been released from prison, refused to send him any money unless he no longer associated with Lord Alfred Douglas. A fall down the stairs in the London home she had shared with Wilde caused Constance to have a form of paralysis, and she died on April 7, 1898, after spinal surgery. She is buried in Genoa, Italy.Oscar Wilde Biography - Poems

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comic play by Oscar Wilde. It premiered on 14 February 1895 at the St. James's Theatre in London.

Set in England during the late Victorian era, the play's humour derives in part from characters maintaining fictitious identities to escape unwelcome social obligations. It is replete with witty dialogue and satirizes some of the foibles and hypocrisy of late Victorian society. It has proved Wilde's most enduringly popular play.

The successful opening night of this play marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his impending downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, attempted to enter the theatre, intending to throw vegetables at the playwright when he took his bow at the end of the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission. Nonetheless, Queensberry's hostility to Wilde was soon to trigger the latter's legal travails and eventual imprisonment. Wilde's notoriety caused the play, despite its success, to be closed after only 83 performances. He never wrote another play.

Category: File - :Peacock2.jpg|thumb|The Peacock Room, designed by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, one of the most famous examples of Aesthetic movement interior design

The Aesthetic Movement is a 19th century European movement that emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design.Colleen. [http://books.google.com/books?id=RvTZrnmy5RoC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=%22Aesthetic+movement%22+swinburne&source=bl&ots=fQGt-5H3y4&sig=Ir3QCh29f7c926rkx620LbcB5fs&hl=en&ei=7kjKSuy9BNDdlAebobGSAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=%22Aesthetic%20movement%22%20swinburne&f=false "At the Temple of Art: the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877-1890", Issue 1165, p. 38, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000 ISBN 0838638503 Generally speaking, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence stood for in France, or decadentismo stood for in Italy, and may be considered the British branch of the same movement. It belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction and had post-Romantic roots, and as such anticipates modernism. It took place in the late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901, and is generally considered to have ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde (which occurred in 1895).

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (Clark Library), one of twelve official libraries at the University of California, Los Angeles, is one of the most comprehensive rare books and manuscripts libraries in the United States, with particular strengths in English literature and history (1641-1800), Oscar Wilde, and fine printing. It is located about thirteen miles from UCLA, in the West Adams District of Los Angeles north of the University of Southern California. It is administered by UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, which offers several prestigious fellowships for graduate and postdoctoral scholars to use the Library's collections. However, any reader with a serious interest in the collection is welcome to study.

The heart of the Clark's academic activity is its core programs, a series of interdisciplinary events developed around a common theme. Core programs may range from three or four consecutive workshops to a series spanning a year or more, with a full complement of symposia, workshops, graduate seminars, and public lectures. The core programs are organized each year by the current Clark Professor or Professors, who are encouraged to design programs that will lead to publication in the Center/Clark series (published by the University of Toronto Press).