His only novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray, while flawed as a work of art, gained him much of his notoriety. This book gives a particularly 1890s perspective on the timeless theme of sin and punishment. Wilde published a volume of poems, some of which were successful, early in his career as a writer (1881), but his only enduring work in this genre is
The Ballad of Reading Gaol. On a curious but productive tangent to his more serious work, Wilde produced two volumes of fairy tales that are delightful in themselves and provide insight into some of his serious social and artistic concerns. His significant literary contributions are rounded off by some critical essays, most notably in
Intentions and his long soul-searching letter to Lord Alfred Douglas,
De Profundis, written in 1897 from Reading prison.
"Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde," Kelly recounted, "was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 into a family of middle-class professionals. His paternal great-great-grandfather had been a Dublin merchant, his great-grandfather a farmer, and his grandfather a doctor. His father, Sir William Wilde, followed his father's profession and became a renowned ear and eye specialist. His success led to his appointment as Surgeon Oculist to the Queen in Ireland in 1863, and he received a knighthood the following year, thus completing the family's rise from mercantile middle classes to gentry status." Kelly continued, "Sir William, as a man with a prominent position, was bound to distance himself from the republican Fenianism of the late 1860s, yet he was a nationalist with kind feelings for the peasant population of Ireland.
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