Oscar Wilde brightened up, for the English-speaking world at least, the stiff and somber final years of the nineteenth century. Like the other magnificent Irishmen, Joyce and Beckett, who would cast brilliant light on the dark and bloody twentieth century, he was born in Dublin. On 16 October 1854, the second son of Dr. William Robert Wills Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee Wilde sounded his first human cry in No. 21, Westland Row, and soon was christened Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wilde; he later added "Wills" as a third middle name.

Wilde's first name, which means "champion" in Gaelic, celebrates two Oscars: the ancient Irish warrior, son of the third-century warrior-poet Ossian, son of Fingal; and Oscar I, king of Sweden, a patient of Dr. Wilde and godfather of Oscar Wilde . Jane Wilde, under the pen name "Speranza," wrote florid battle cries to advance the cause of Irish freedom. She followed the...