Confident of his strength in the subject, Wilde took an examination on June 23rd of the same year which gained him a Demyship (or scholarship) in classics at Magdalen College, Oxford. At Trinity he showed an aptitude for classics, and was awarded the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek near the end of his study in 1874. In 1871, Wilde was awarded a Royal School scholarship to Trinity College in Dublin. Such instances can be taken as early assertions of his later dandyism.

Ellmann notes that “Wilde alone among the boys wore a silk hat on weekends” and one of Wilde’s classmates cited him as “more careful in his dress than any other boy” (Ellmann 23). In 1864, Wilde and his older brother were sent to live and study at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen it was here that Wilde began to make a reputation for himself. His mother was a prolific poet who published nationalist poems in Irish newspapers and his father, who was a physician, wrote many successful medical books. Another way his parents influenced him was through their own writing. Wilde’s biographer, Richard Ellmann, notes that Lady Wilde renamed herself “Speranza Francesca Wilde” and frequently pretended to be younger than she truthfully was, which helps to explain Wilde’s fascination with name and age in his later work (6-7).

Wilde’s mother, born Jane Frances Elgee, was a woman of immense character whose thoughts and actions heavily influenced her son. (William Wilde also had three illegitimate children whom he continued to support).

He was the second child of parents Sir William and Jane Wilde his older brother, William Robert Kingsbury Wills Wilde, was born in 1852 and his younger sister, Isola Francesca Emily Wilde, would be born in 1857. Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16th, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.

Oscar wilde biographie richard ellmann