Poet

Oscar Wilde

1854-1900

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, poet, playwright and novelist, was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, and died on November 30, 1900, in penury and exile in Paris.

Josephine Hart says, ‘Please let us hear no more of the tragedy of Oscar Wilde … Oscar was no tragedian. He was the superb comedian of the century, one to whom misfortune, disgrace and imprisonment were external yet traumatic. His gaiety of soul was invulnerable; it shines through the blackest pages of De Profundis as clearly as in his wittiest epigraph. Even on his deathbed he found himself in no pity, “playing for a laugh with his last breath, and getting it with as sure a stroke as in his balmiest days”, according to George Bernard Shaw. He belongs to our world.

Poems

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Readings

Oscar Wilde: 'Requiescat' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'The Harlot's House' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'Hellas!' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'Roses And Rue' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' read by Dominic West
Select reading
Oscar Wilde: 'Requiescat' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'The Harlot's House' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'Hellas!' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'Roses And Rue' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' read by Simon Callow
Oscar Wilde: 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' read by Dominic West
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