At Trinity, he met Sir J.P Mahaffy - his professor, who he later said “taught me to love Greek things” and so influenced him greatly. Mahaffy once boasted that he had “created Wilde”, though later he described him as “the only blot on my tutorship” after Wilde’s imprisonment.

in 1878, he won the Newdigate prize for his poem “Ravenna”, his first big break into published works.

They would go on trips together, and some of their letters were..interesting.

“Dearest Kitten, have you fallen down a well, or misplaced yourself such as that you cannot write to me?”

In 1880 he completed his first play- Vera, or the Nihilists. It was a melodrama and was privately printed and sent to various actress friends of his in hopes to interest them in playing the main character. It was eventually settled to be Mrs. Bernard Beere.

In 1881, Wilde published a book of poems. It was titled, rather creatively, Poems. It received much press, though mostly negative. One quote from the caption of a caricature was “ Aesthete of Aesthetes!/ What’s in a name / The poet is Wilde / but his poetry’s tame.” At the same time, however, many still considered his poems ‘controversial’

Despite his controversy and criticism, He maintained his reputation and even had a satire play featuring an impersonation of him…

He obliged enthusiastically, and arrived in America on January 3, 1882. He said at customs “I have nothing to declare except my genius.” Throughout the year he traveled around the country giving speeches preaching his ideals and philosophies to people from California to New York to Texas and even Canada at some point. There he learned about different cultural, political, and religious states across the nation at the time. He wrote to Mrs. Bernard Beere that the Mormons in California sat in huge family groups and were “ very, very ugly.”

He met Walt Whitman, a then 64 year old poet whom he admired greatly and may have slept with..? He was quoted as saying that he still had “the kiss of Walt Whitman on [his] lips.”

It’s not clear if Wilde was very involved in his homosexuality before he met Robbie Ross, but he seemed to have begun most of his gay affairs from that point forward. Robbie Ross met Wilde in 1886, two years before he even went to college. He was also probably the closest thing you could be to openly gay at the time. He became a lifelong close friend and their relationship lasted until around 1889.

When commissioned by Lippincott’s monthly magazine, among other authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, he was initially going to do a short story called The Fisherman And His Soul (which he did end up publishing separately) but halfway through he decided to write the novel he’d had the idea for since 1887 when he had Frances Richards, the Canadian painter, paint his portrait. He communicated some similar themes in his dialogue essay “The Portrait of Mr. W.H” including themes of morality, homosexuality, and youth. The Picture of Dorian Gray took longer than the publisher had expected, since it was originally commissioned as a short story and had far exceeded its word limit, eventually being finished and sent in 7 months after the deadline in July 1890.

This was a decidedly negative influence on Wilde, however. Douglas was a spoilt man who spent all his money on gambling and rent boys. (Rent boys were basically code for male prostitutes) their relationship influenced oscar to follow in his footsteps.

And so began a spiral and a so-called "double life" he led; one as the prolific writer and family man, and one as the decadent gay man who spent most of his money buying gifts for bosie and the various rent boys he paid for.

Bosie was also really mean to him.. it was clear their relationship was toxic. There was one time, allegedly, where Oscar had helped him to recover from a sickness and subsequently caught it from him. as he lay sick in bed, he was sent Bosie's hotel bill, not visited even once.

Anyways, Oscar and Bosie's "friendship" continued until a fateful day in 1895.

Bosie's father was the Marquess of Queensbury, otherwise known as the inventor of modern boxing rules apparently. he sent a card to Oscar Wilde's club which said in nearly illegible handwriting something along the lines of, "To Oscar Wilde, posing as sodomite." (He actually misspelled sodomite it said somdomite on the original card).

To sue for libel, one had to assure their lawyer that what they were suing for was completely untrue. Wilde assured his lawyer it was untrue. it was, in fact, true. Queensberry's lawyers had gathered rent boys from all over the underbelly of London who gave some of their testimonies, before the court ruled it suspicious enough that the next day Oscar Wilde's trial would commence.

The trial lasted 2 days where he defended himself eloquently and wittily, and it seemed as if he would be left off the hook. Until he said that a particular boy was "far too ugly" for him to kiss, which lead the court to believe that he was in fact guilty. He was sentenced to two years hard labor by a judge who was quoted saying “It is the worst case I have ever tried. I shall pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years.”

Victorian prisons are infamous for their horrible conditions, and Oscar Wilde's experience was no different. he was made to sleep on wood planks with inadequate meals and was made to walk a treadmill for six hours a day. he had to declare bankruptcy while in prison, and never saw his wife or children again afterwards.

Bosie was nowhere to be found during this time.

In early 1897, just around 4 months before his release, he wrote a letter i believe to be his best work; De Profundis.

Ross published an extremely abridged version of the letter in 1905, titling it De Profundis and cutting out any reference to Bosie or his trial. In 1908 or so a slightly expanded version was published across some compilation works, though the full version wasn’t available to the public until 1960 at Ross’ request when he donated it to the British Museum, and it was eventually donated to the British Public Library.

His last written work was The Ballad of Reading Gaol (pronounced redding jail), a poem of an ex soldier who was executed during his time in prison. It heavily critiques the system and its cruelty. He never published anything again.

And after all that, he still got back with Bosie in Rome, despite his wife’s conditions, despite De Profundis, despite everything. They sent letters to each other all the way until around a week or so before Oscar’s death. He was still in contact with many of his friends, though his mother had died while he was in prison, including Robbie Ross, who stayed with him regardless and even by his deathbed.

During mass in prison, he collapsed due to malnutrition which made him sustain an ear and brain injury. This eventually spiraled into meningitis over the next 3 years of ignoring it, and it was his cause of death on November 30, 1900 at the age of 46. His last words were reportedly “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.”

His Father, Sir William Wilde, was a doctor, or rather a oto-ophthalmologic surgeon. He opened and ran his own hospital in Dublin, St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital for Diseases of the Eye and Ear. He eventually made his way out of society’s eye after a sexual assault case was put against him and he retired to the west of Ireland and died while Oscar was in College.

The publishing history of this novel is complicated. Originally published anonymously, the publisher’s only clue was that it was written by a great wit (everybody assumed it was Oscar Wilde, who wasn’t particularly hidden about his sexuality at the time)(perhaps recklessly so) it was later reported that it was apparently written through a long and complicated game of telephone, beginning with Oscar Wilde and going through many different young men with each other’s cards until eventually they had a volume of inconsistent writing styles and inconsistent plot. Still decent though. And important