Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde

Abstract

Wilde was the most colourful figure on the literary scene at the end of the century. He was a flamboyant aesthete, a studied conversationalist and brilliant wit. From school in Dublin, followed by seven years at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and after a period at Trinity College, Dublin, he proceeded to Magdalen College, Oxford, and easily gained first class in the examinations for Classical Mods and Greats. In 1878 his poem Ravenna won the university’s Newdigate Prize. He became an admirer of Ruskin, a disciple of Pater, and a devotee of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’.