Chronology

1854	Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde born (he added ‘Wills’ in the 1870s) on 16 October at 21 Westland Row, Dublin.
1855	His family move to 1 Merrion Square in Dublin.
1857	Birth of Isola Wilde, Oscar’s sister.
1858	Birth of Constance Mary Lloyd, Wilde’s future wife.
1864	Wilde’s father is knighted following his appointment as Queen Victoria’s ‘Surgeon Oculist’ the previous year. Wilde attends Portora Royal School, Enniskillen.
1867	Death of Isola Wilde.
1871–4	At Trinity College, Dublin, reading Classics and Ancient History.
1874–8	At Magdalen College, Oxford, reading Classics and Ancient History (‘Greats’).
1875	Travels in Italy with his tutor from Dublin, J. P. Mahaffy.
1876	First poems published in Dublin University Magazine. Death of Sir William Wilde.
1877	Further travels in Italy, and in Greece.
1878	Wins the Newdigate Prize for Poetry in Oxford with ‘Ravenna’. Takes a double first from Oxford. Moves to London and starts to establish himself as a popularizer of Aestheticism.
1879	Meets Constance Lloyd.
1881	Poems published at his own expense; not well received critically.
1882	Lecture tour of North America, speaking on art, aesthetics and decoration. Revised edition of Poems published.
1883	His first play, Vera; or, The Nihilists, performed in New York; it is not a success.
1884	Marries Constance Lloyd in London, honeymoon in Paris and Dieppe.
1885	Moves into 16 Tite Street, Chelsea. Cyril Wilde born.
1886	Vyvyan Wilde born. Meets Robert Ross, to become his lifelong friend and, in 1897, his literary executor. Ross may have been Wilde’s first homosexual lover.
1887	Becomes the editor of Lady’s World: A Magazine of Fashion and Society, and changes its name to Woman’s World. Publication of ‘The Canterville Ghost’ and ‘Lord Arthur Savil’s Crime’.
1888	The Happy Prince and Other Tales published; on the whole well received.
1889	‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ (on the forger and poisoner Thomas Griffiths Wainewright), ‘The Decay of Lying’ (a dialogue in praise of artifice over nature and art over morality), ‘The Portrait of Mr W.H.’ (on the supposed identity of the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s sonnets) all published.
1890	The Picture of Dorian Gray published in the July number of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine; fierce debate between Wilde and hostile critics ensues. ‘The True Function and Value of Criticism’ (later revised and included in Intentions as ‘The Critic as Artist’) published.
1891	Wilde’s first meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas (‘Bosie’). The Duchess of Padua performed in New York. ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’ and ‘Preface to Dorian Gray’ published in February and March in the Fortnightly Review. The revised and extended edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray published by Ward, Lock and Company in April. Intentions (collection of critical essays), Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories and A House of Pomegranates (fairy-tales) published.
1892	Lady Windermere’s Fan performed at St James’s Theatre, London (February to July).
1893	Salomé published in French. A Woman of No Importance performed at Haymarket Theatre, London.
1894	Salome published in English with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley; Douglas is the dedicatee. The Sphinx, a poem with illustrations by Charles Ricketts, published.
1895	An Ideal Husband opens at Haymarket Theatre in January; it is followed by the hugely successful The Importance of Being Earnest at St James’s Theatre in February. On 28 February Wilde returns to his club, the Albemarle, to find a card from Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, accusing Wilde of ‘posing as a somdomite’ (sodomite). Wilde quickly takes out an action accusing Queensberry of criminal libel. In April Queensberry appears at the Old Bailey and is acquitted, following a successful plea of justification on the basis that Wilde was guilty of homosexual behaviour. Wilde is immediately arrested, after ignoring his friends’ advice to flee the country. In May he is tried twice at the Old Bailey, and on 25 May sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour for ‘acts of gross indecency with another male person’. In July he is sent to Wandsworth Prison. In November he is declared bankrupt, and shortly afterwards transferred to Reading Gaol.
1896	Death of Wilde’s mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (‘Speranza’).
1897	Wilde writes the long letter to Douglas that would be later entitled ‘De Profundis’. In May Wilde is released from prison, and sails for Dieppe by the night ferry. He never returns to Britain.
1898	The Ballad of Reading Gaol published pseudonymously as C.3.3, Wilde’s cell-number in Reading Gaol. Wilde moves to Paris in February. Constance Wilde (who had by now changed her name to Holland) dies.
1899	Willie (b. 1852), Wilde’s elder brother, dies.
1900	In January Queensberry dies. By July Wilde himself is very ill with a blood infection. On 29 November he is received into the Roman Catholic Church, and dies on 30 November in the Hôtel d’Alsace in Paris.
1905	An abridged version of De Profundis, edited by Robert Ross, published.
1908	The Collected Works, edited by Robert Ross, are published.