The family was devastated by Isola's death. He had an older brother, Willie, and a younger sister, Isola, who died at the age of eight in 1867. In general, Wilde's childhood appears to have been a happy if unconventional one. She became famous for this incident and, many years later, encouraged Wilde to stand trial rather than run away, no doubt imagining another famous court victory for the Wilde family. Her poetry was inflammatory and pro-nationalist, and in 1849 during the sedition trial of a magazine editor, she stood up in court and claimed authorship of the offending articles (a mother taking responsibility for someone else's failings to save their reputation is a theme in Wilde's play, Lady Windemere's Fan, 1892). After her husband died in 1876, she moved her salon to London. Jane Wilde created a salon society in Dublin, and her large Saturday-afternoon receptions included writers, government officials, professors, actors, and musicians. Wilde shared both her literary taste and fashion flamboyance. She dressed up in increasingly outlandish costumes, complete with headdresses and bizarre jewelry. She was a writer and poet with a flair for the dramatic not only in her writing but also in her appearance. Wilde's mother, Jane, wrote popular poetry and prose under the pseudonym Speranza. Wilde likely learned sympathy for the poor from his father, who would collect folklore instead of fees from the peasants he treated. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon. Wilde's family was Anglo-Irish, and he was raised a Protestant. There was long-standing tensions between the British and Irish, as the Irish agitated for more control and home rule. Outside of the six counties of the north that were predominantly British and Protestant-commonly known as Ulster-absentee British landlords controlled much of the land in the remaining twenty-six counties that were predominantly Catholic, rural, and poor. At the time, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and controlled by the British. Influenced by Creative, Flamboyant Mother Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Short stories, novels, essays, and poems, and he challenged Victorian morality with his work and his lifestyle. He posed as an aesthete and a decadent-a follower of literary movements of the late Victorian age that argued for “art for art's sake.” Nevertheless, Wilde advocated reform through social critique in his plays, There is a temptation to treat British author Oscar Wilde's work lightly in large part due to his flamboyant and notorious lifestyle, which is often better known than his writings. The Happy Prince, and Other Tales (1888) Overview

The Major Works by Oscar Wilde