Oscar WildeMan is less himself when he speaks in person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth. On 16 October 1854 Oscar (Fingal O'Flaghertie Wills) Wilde was born in Dublin. He is the son of Dr. William Wilde and the Irish nationalist poet Jane F. Wilde (known as "Hope", her pen name). Oscar grew up with very high expectations of him from his mother. He enrolled at Trinity College, where he graduated at the age of seventeen and continued his studies on a scholarship to Oxford. At Oxford he was known as an esthete. Under the influence of the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century, Oscar found the notions of "art for art's sake" and dedicating one's life to art suited his temperament and talents. Although Oscar had not achieved substantial results in being well known from 1878 to 1881, he was still quite popular in London. He classified himself in the class of people labeled "the beautiful people". Being a "beautiful [person]" he wore outrageous clothes, passed himself off as an art critic and esthete, and built a reputation for saying shocking things and doing funny things. These "beautiful people" were often called dandies, they wore clothes similar to Wilde's way of dressing: velvet coat, knee-length trousers, silk stockings, light green tie, shoulder-length hair, loose silk shirts and a lily that he brought from time to time. Oscar's popularity, pageantry and, of course, literary talent brought him ever closer to the fame he desired. Oscar published his first volume of poetry in 1881. In 1882, upon his arrival in New York City, he began a year-long tour of North America. His lectures were more about aestheticism and "art for art's sake" than about the strength of his reputation as a writer. W...... middle of paper ......and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (pronounced "redding jail"), a poem that explores the harsh nature of prison life. It was published anonymously under the pseudonym C33 (Wilde's prison number) and became his last significant work. Oscar Wilde died at the age of 46 on November 30, 1990 from cerebral meningitis. Bibliography Beckson, Karl. Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s. Period Books, New York, 1966. Charlesworth, Barbara. Dark Passages: Decadent Consciousness in Victorian Literature. The University of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wisconsin, 1965. Harris, Frank. Oscar Wilde. Dorset Press, New York, 1989. Montgomery Hyde, H. Oscar Wilde- The Aftermath. Farrar, Strauss & Company, New York, 1963. University Books. The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde: Verbatim Transcripts and an Introduction by H. Montgomery Hyde. University Books, New York, January 1956.