Biography and Background
Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy all share a common characteristic: at one point in their life they were presented with a major complication. Whether that complication was harsh criticism, terminal illness, a quickly changing society or even an infuriated father, these men overcame obstacles to deliver their ever-lasting messages to society and pursue their dreams as writers.
Born on October 16, 1854 with a mouthful of a name, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was destined to achieve great feats in his lifetime. His mother, Jane Francesca aspired for greatness herself and instilled it upon her son. Being a writer with exuberant nationalistic pride, she encouraged Wilde as a boy to pursue a writing career, because she believed it was a good way for one to express themself to others (Traynor 1). Some of her works, although not nearly as well-known as her son’s, include poems of the upcoming “revolution, the Famine, and the exodus from Ireland of the famished.” She worked under the pseudonym “Speranza.” Oscar Wilde’s father, William Robert Wilde, was an extremely successful eye and ear surgeon who was reportedly so talented “that he [once] operated on [Bernard] Shaw’s father to correct a squint, and the operation was so successful that the squint went straight to the other side of the eye.” William Wilde had also written two textbooks pertaining to his fields; Epidemic Ophthalmia (1851) and Aural Surgery (1853), which both remained solid references for several years. Oscar Wilde undoubtedly had a strong background in literature stemming from his childhood (Traynor 1).
Wilde knew early on that he wanted to be a writer, so in February of 1864, he enrolled at the Portora Royal School to pursue a promising career. Samuel Beckett, “another great Irish literary master” also attended the very same school (Traynor 1). During the years following his graduation from the Portora Royal School, Wilde received several honors and had his name inscribed in gilt letters on a scroll in the hallway honoring academic prize-winners. In 1871 he enrolled at Trinity College and three years later he attended Oxford from 1874-1878, where he earned a superfluity of honors and prizes (Traynor 1). Beginning in January of 1882, Wilde landed in New York and began his tour of America. For the duration of about a year, he traveled the continent lecturing about “The Beautiful,” a prevalent theme in his book The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1884, while in Paris, Wilde determined he needed a woman in his life and on May 29, he married Constance Llyod, a woman three years younger than himself who shared many of his interests (Traynor 2). The two had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, during the next two years. Wilde now had a family to provide for, so he temporarily turned to journalism for a couple of years in which he wrote approximately one hundred reviews, some for “The Woman’s World,” a magazine that addressed topics such as women's suffrage and feminism. His editorship for the magazine was short-lived, for in 1889 he became bored with journalism and focused mainly on being an author. He published his first book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, on June 20, 1890, strengthening his reputation as an author, even though the book caused uproar among critics since it changed the “appearance of Victorian Literature” (Traynor 2).
In the prime of his career as “the most sought-after man in London,” Wilde’s career progress experienced a sudden halt (Traynor 2). Sparked by a new flamboyant relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde was accused by Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, as being a sodomite. As Wilde’s friend and lover, Douglas encouraged Wilde to stand up against his father and defend himself in court in the libel suit. On the day the verdict was received, Wilde lost the case and was arrested on charges of gross indecent acts (Traynor 3). After being convicted a criminal and serving prison time, Wild essentially retired as a writer, only writing one more book after his release on May 19, 1897: The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which describes the rancid conditions of the prison as well as his grueling experiences. He chose not to put his name on the book, instead he labeled the author as C.3.3., his prison number (Traynor 4). Ironically, “the most sought-after man in London,” closed out his life as a mockery, living in shame and poverty. He perished at the age of 46 of meningitis, which developed from an inner ear injury received during prison, on November 30, 1900 at the Hotel d’Alsace, Rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris (Traynor 4).
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unlikely other children his age, he was a “sickly, fragile child, and suffered from severe respiratory ailments that frequently interrupted his schooling,” so he was deprived of a normal childhood and bound to his bed (Harris 1). However, despite his illnesses, he still received high expectations from his parents. His father, who was a civil engineer, expected him to attend school to study as an engineer in order to follow his footsteps and continue building life-houses; however, Stevenson was consumed with the idea of being an author and rejected his father’s wishes (Harris 1). Starting at a young age, his mother read him his favorite stories, and by the time he was six years old, he began compiling his own stories by dictating them to his mother. A voracious desire for adventure, motivated by his luck-luster childhood was the ultimate factor in his profession and he does an excellent job of recreating his childhood fantasies through his works
(Stevenson 1).
As Stevenson grew older and his severe respiratory problems lightened up, he was able to regularly attend courses at Edinburgh University. After experiencing an engineer’s daily routine, he realized his illness would not allow him to partake in the field to follow his father’s footsteps (Stevenson 1). In order to please his parents, he abode to their wishes and took courses in law, but found it boring and not suited for him. It was then that “he decided to develop his natural gift for speech and writing.” Stevenson aspired for greatness his entire life, refusing to succumb to his lifelong illnesses (Stevenson 1). He taught himself the art of writing by intensely studying the works of Daniel Defoe, Michel De Montaigne, and George Meredith, further developing his natural talents as a writer and speaker (Harris 1). Robert Stevenson distinguished himself from others authors of his time, including Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde, by pleasing readers with his “…delightful conversation manner and by the graceful flow of his style” (Stevenson 1). Some of his most prominent works depicting this trait include An Island Voyage, published in 1878, Travels with a Donkey, published in 1879, Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an eerie tale of a corrupt doctor’s double identity (Stevenson 2). In 1876, Stevenson met Mrs. Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, “the great romance of [his] life,” in France. Struck with love, upon hearing news of her falling to illness, he followed her back to her far-away home in San Francisco. The journey to California nearly killed him; he developed a bad case of tuberculosis, but he was restored to health by Mrs. Osbourne after he arrived (Stevenson 2). By 1880, Stevenson, accompanied by his newly-wedded wife and stepchildren moved to his home country, Scotland, beginning a search for a home with a climate amiable to his constantly-changing health as well as a job to provide for his family (Stevenson 2).
Stevenson quickly realized he had made a poor choice in deciding to move his family to Scotland, because he could not tolerate the inclement climate due to his respiratory complications. In 1887, after an extended South Sea Island Cruise, his family returned to America and sailed to Upolu, one of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific, where they settled and purchased a large estate (Stevenson 2). Satisfied with the island and its native inhabitants, Robert Louis Stevenson lived there until he unexpectedly died of a stroke on December 3, 1894, at the young age of forty-four. Stevenson developed a close relationship with the Samoan people, who referred to him as “Tusitala,” teller of tales, so upon his death they carried his body to the summit of Mount Vaea, where he was buried to overlook the Pacific; a funeral any avid adventurer would deem worthy (Stevenson 2).
Thomas Hardy was born in November of 1840 and spent his childhood in a tiny village called Higher Bockhampton in Dorset, where centuries before his time, his family had the aristocratic name “le Hardy” and were notable landowners. However when he was growing up his family name had lost all of its integrity – his mother, Jemima, was a former domestic servant and his father was a unambitious business man (Kirsch 2). The two rushed into a marriage five months before Hardy was born. “The Hardys were the kind of family that Jane Austen would never have allowed into her parlor.” Hardy’s mother wanted the best for her son so she sent him to the best school she could in close by Dorchester, hoping that one day he would be a “professional man” (Kirsch 2). During his childhood, Hardy had a very atypical experience for a boy of his age: during a church sermon, he watched the priest speak as ‘“some mischievous movement of his mind set him imagining that the vicar was preaching mockingly, and he began trying to trace a humorous twitch in the corners of Mr. S—‘s mouth, as if he could hardly keep a serious countenance.”’ From that day on, the memory of his experience has caused him ‘“much mental distress,”’ and he would later become and remain and atheist for the remainder of his life (Kirsch 1).
By age 16, Thomas Hardy had received a well-rounded education, predominantly in mathematics and Latin; enough to qualify for a university like Oxford or Cambridge. His family could not afford to send him to such a high level institution, so he worked as an apprentice under a local architect in London at the age of twenty-two (Kirsch 2, Teisch 1). While in London, he attended courses at King’s College, explored museums, and read Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mills’ works because he began to take an interest in writing and literature (Teisch 2). Ironically, as an atheist, Hardy spent the majority of his architectural career specializing in rebuilding churches (Kirsch 2). At age thirty-two he retired from architecture entirely in order to fully pursue a writing career. Two years later in 1874, he married Emma Gifford, who at first held Hardy’s affection tightly (Teisch 1). Although their marriage lasted 38 years, it was clearly “one of the unhappiest marriages in literary history.” Early in his marriage, Hardy’s career as a writer began to take off with the publication of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), and The Return of the Native (1878). About ten years later he published his masterpieces: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and the extremely controversial Jude the Obscure (1895) (Teisch 1). Hardy relied heavily on his past experiences when constructing a new poem or part of a novel. ‘“From boyhood he was an acute observer, noting the Dorsetshire world around him with a naturalist’s eye and a painter’s sensitivity to light and colour, often recollecting specific scenes in vivid detail decades later”’ (Malcolmson 1). Aside from being a popular novelist, Hardy also wrote over 900 poems and actually preferred the title poet before novelist (Teisch 1).
Thomas Hardy lived and died as a legend. Towards the conclusion of his life during his seventies, he earned many honors: he became the president of the Society of Authors in 1909, King George V conferred on him the Order of Merit and Freedon of Dorchester in 1910 and he received the Royal Society of Literature’s gold medal two years later in 1912. The year1912 also marks the date his unhappy marriage ended when his wife Emma died. Unaffected by his wife’s death, Hardy married his younger secretary at seventy-two and remained married to her until he died in Dorset in 1928 at eighty-eight years old (Teisch 1). Once again religious irony is seen in Hardy’s life, because he was given a Christian burial (Kirsch 1).
Each of these prolific writers certainly had extraordinary lives: they traveled the world spreading their love for literature, witnessed some things most other people never would have, and were very famous (in Wilde's case, infamous). All of these experiences have a profound effect and provide mountains of original material for their work.
Born on October 16, 1854 with a mouthful of a name, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, was destined to achieve great feats in his lifetime. His mother, Jane Francesca aspired for greatness herself and instilled it upon her son. Being a writer with exuberant nationalistic pride, she encouraged Wilde as a boy to pursue a writing career, because she believed it was a good way for one to express themself to others (Traynor 1). Some of her works, although not nearly as well-known as her son’s, include poems of the upcoming “revolution, the Famine, and the exodus from Ireland of the famished.” She worked under the pseudonym “Speranza.” Oscar Wilde’s father, William Robert Wilde, was an extremely successful eye and ear surgeon who was reportedly so talented “that he [once] operated on [Bernard] Shaw’s father to correct a squint, and the operation was so successful that the squint went straight to the other side of the eye.” William Wilde had also written two textbooks pertaining to his fields; Epidemic Ophthalmia (1851) and Aural Surgery (1853), which both remained solid references for several years. Oscar Wilde undoubtedly had a strong background in literature stemming from his childhood (Traynor 1).
Wilde knew early on that he wanted to be a writer, so in February of 1864, he enrolled at the Portora Royal School to pursue a promising career. Samuel Beckett, “another great Irish literary master” also attended the very same school (Traynor 1). During the years following his graduation from the Portora Royal School, Wilde received several honors and had his name inscribed in gilt letters on a scroll in the hallway honoring academic prize-winners. In 1871 he enrolled at Trinity College and three years later he attended Oxford from 1874-1878, where he earned a superfluity of honors and prizes (Traynor 1). Beginning in January of 1882, Wilde landed in New York and began his tour of America. For the duration of about a year, he traveled the continent lecturing about “The Beautiful,” a prevalent theme in his book The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1884, while in Paris, Wilde determined he needed a woman in his life and on May 29, he married Constance Llyod, a woman three years younger than himself who shared many of his interests (Traynor 2). The two had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, during the next two years. Wilde now had a family to provide for, so he temporarily turned to journalism for a couple of years in which he wrote approximately one hundred reviews, some for “The Woman’s World,” a magazine that addressed topics such as women's suffrage and feminism. His editorship for the magazine was short-lived, for in 1889 he became bored with journalism and focused mainly on being an author. He published his first book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, on June 20, 1890, strengthening his reputation as an author, even though the book caused uproar among critics since it changed the “appearance of Victorian Literature” (Traynor 2).
In the prime of his career as “the most sought-after man in London,” Wilde’s career progress experienced a sudden halt (Traynor 2). Sparked by a new flamboyant relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde was accused by Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, as being a sodomite. As Wilde’s friend and lover, Douglas encouraged Wilde to stand up against his father and defend himself in court in the libel suit. On the day the verdict was received, Wilde lost the case and was arrested on charges of gross indecent acts (Traynor 3). After being convicted a criminal and serving prison time, Wild essentially retired as a writer, only writing one more book after his release on May 19, 1897: The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which describes the rancid conditions of the prison as well as his grueling experiences. He chose not to put his name on the book, instead he labeled the author as C.3.3., his prison number (Traynor 4). Ironically, “the most sought-after man in London,” closed out his life as a mockery, living in shame and poverty. He perished at the age of 46 of meningitis, which developed from an inner ear injury received during prison, on November 30, 1900 at the Hotel d’Alsace, Rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris (Traynor 4).
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unlikely other children his age, he was a “sickly, fragile child, and suffered from severe respiratory ailments that frequently interrupted his schooling,” so he was deprived of a normal childhood and bound to his bed (Harris 1). However, despite his illnesses, he still received high expectations from his parents. His father, who was a civil engineer, expected him to attend school to study as an engineer in order to follow his footsteps and continue building life-houses; however, Stevenson was consumed with the idea of being an author and rejected his father’s wishes (Harris 1). Starting at a young age, his mother read him his favorite stories, and by the time he was six years old, he began compiling his own stories by dictating them to his mother. A voracious desire for adventure, motivated by his luck-luster childhood was the ultimate factor in his profession and he does an excellent job of recreating his childhood fantasies through his works
(Stevenson 1).
As Stevenson grew older and his severe respiratory problems lightened up, he was able to regularly attend courses at Edinburgh University. After experiencing an engineer’s daily routine, he realized his illness would not allow him to partake in the field to follow his father’s footsteps (Stevenson 1). In order to please his parents, he abode to their wishes and took courses in law, but found it boring and not suited for him. It was then that “he decided to develop his natural gift for speech and writing.” Stevenson aspired for greatness his entire life, refusing to succumb to his lifelong illnesses (Stevenson 1). He taught himself the art of writing by intensely studying the works of Daniel Defoe, Michel De Montaigne, and George Meredith, further developing his natural talents as a writer and speaker (Harris 1). Robert Stevenson distinguished himself from others authors of his time, including Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde, by pleasing readers with his “…delightful conversation manner and by the graceful flow of his style” (Stevenson 1). Some of his most prominent works depicting this trait include An Island Voyage, published in 1878, Travels with a Donkey, published in 1879, Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, an eerie tale of a corrupt doctor’s double identity (Stevenson 2). In 1876, Stevenson met Mrs. Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, “the great romance of [his] life,” in France. Struck with love, upon hearing news of her falling to illness, he followed her back to her far-away home in San Francisco. The journey to California nearly killed him; he developed a bad case of tuberculosis, but he was restored to health by Mrs. Osbourne after he arrived (Stevenson 2). By 1880, Stevenson, accompanied by his newly-wedded wife and stepchildren moved to his home country, Scotland, beginning a search for a home with a climate amiable to his constantly-changing health as well as a job to provide for his family (Stevenson 2).
Stevenson quickly realized he had made a poor choice in deciding to move his family to Scotland, because he could not tolerate the inclement climate due to his respiratory complications. In 1887, after an extended South Sea Island Cruise, his family returned to America and sailed to Upolu, one of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific, where they settled and purchased a large estate (Stevenson 2). Satisfied with the island and its native inhabitants, Robert Louis Stevenson lived there until he unexpectedly died of a stroke on December 3, 1894, at the young age of forty-four. Stevenson developed a close relationship with the Samoan people, who referred to him as “Tusitala,” teller of tales, so upon his death they carried his body to the summit of Mount Vaea, where he was buried to overlook the Pacific; a funeral any avid adventurer would deem worthy (Stevenson 2).
Thomas Hardy was born in November of 1840 and spent his childhood in a tiny village called Higher Bockhampton in Dorset, where centuries before his time, his family had the aristocratic name “le Hardy” and were notable landowners. However when he was growing up his family name had lost all of its integrity – his mother, Jemima, was a former domestic servant and his father was a unambitious business man (Kirsch 2). The two rushed into a marriage five months before Hardy was born. “The Hardys were the kind of family that Jane Austen would never have allowed into her parlor.” Hardy’s mother wanted the best for her son so she sent him to the best school she could in close by Dorchester, hoping that one day he would be a “professional man” (Kirsch 2). During his childhood, Hardy had a very atypical experience for a boy of his age: during a church sermon, he watched the priest speak as ‘“some mischievous movement of his mind set him imagining that the vicar was preaching mockingly, and he began trying to trace a humorous twitch in the corners of Mr. S—‘s mouth, as if he could hardly keep a serious countenance.”’ From that day on, the memory of his experience has caused him ‘“much mental distress,”’ and he would later become and remain and atheist for the remainder of his life (Kirsch 1).
By age 16, Thomas Hardy had received a well-rounded education, predominantly in mathematics and Latin; enough to qualify for a university like Oxford or Cambridge. His family could not afford to send him to such a high level institution, so he worked as an apprentice under a local architect in London at the age of twenty-two (Kirsch 2, Teisch 1). While in London, he attended courses at King’s College, explored museums, and read Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mills’ works because he began to take an interest in writing and literature (Teisch 2). Ironically, as an atheist, Hardy spent the majority of his architectural career specializing in rebuilding churches (Kirsch 2). At age thirty-two he retired from architecture entirely in order to fully pursue a writing career. Two years later in 1874, he married Emma Gifford, who at first held Hardy’s affection tightly (Teisch 1). Although their marriage lasted 38 years, it was clearly “one of the unhappiest marriages in literary history.” Early in his marriage, Hardy’s career as a writer began to take off with the publication of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), and The Return of the Native (1878). About ten years later he published his masterpieces: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and the extremely controversial Jude the Obscure (1895) (Teisch 1). Hardy relied heavily on his past experiences when constructing a new poem or part of a novel. ‘“From boyhood he was an acute observer, noting the Dorsetshire world around him with a naturalist’s eye and a painter’s sensitivity to light and colour, often recollecting specific scenes in vivid detail decades later”’ (Malcolmson 1). Aside from being a popular novelist, Hardy also wrote over 900 poems and actually preferred the title poet before novelist (Teisch 1).
Thomas Hardy lived and died as a legend. Towards the conclusion of his life during his seventies, he earned many honors: he became the president of the Society of Authors in 1909, King George V conferred on him the Order of Merit and Freedon of Dorchester in 1910 and he received the Royal Society of Literature’s gold medal two years later in 1912. The year1912 also marks the date his unhappy marriage ended when his wife Emma died. Unaffected by his wife’s death, Hardy married his younger secretary at seventy-two and remained married to her until he died in Dorset in 1928 at eighty-eight years old (Teisch 1). Once again religious irony is seen in Hardy’s life, because he was given a Christian burial (Kirsch 1).
Each of these prolific writers certainly had extraordinary lives: they traveled the world spreading their love for literature, witnessed some things most other people never would have, and were very famous (in Wilde's case, infamous). All of these experiences have a profound effect and provide mountains of original material for their work.
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