The Life and Works of Oscar Wilde

By Alan Sperry

Oscar Wilde was many things - a playwright, novelist, poet, critic, editor, art reviewer, lecturer, and one of the greatest celebrities of his time. He is one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian era, known for his wit and audacity.

He was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854, a second son born into a prominent Anglo-Irish family. His father, Sir William Wilde (1815 - 1876), was a renowned surgeon and gifted writer. His mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1820-1896), was a successful poet and journalist publishing under the pen name Speranza.

Wilde was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (1871-74) and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874-78), where he won Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna. While at Oxford, he became a proponent of aestheticism, an artistic movement that promoted beauty and pleasure above all else - art for art's sake.

In 1881, he published his first volume of poems. At that time he worked as an art reviewer, lecturer and editor. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd with whom he had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.

In 1888 he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a volume of fairy-tales written for his two sons. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in 1891 and was denounced by critics as decadent.

In 1891, when he was 38 years old, he met a 22 year old English poet Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie. He began an affair with Bosie, son of the Marquis of Queensberry, which eventually lead to his ruin.

In 1890s Wilde became widely known as one of the most prominent playwrights. During this years he wrote Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), which is still packing theaters today.

In 1895 he lost a libel action against the Marquis of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) he had been infatuated with since 1891. He was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for homosexual offences.

When he was released from prison in May, 1897, he moved to Paris. Inspired by his experience in prison, he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). He died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900, in a cheap Paris hotel.

About the Author:

Alan Sperry loves reading Victorian authors and he really admires Oscar Wilde frases. To learn more about wilde, see Life of Oscar Wilde.

Who Was Franz Kafka - Fact Facts

By Paul Hooke

Franz Kafka is one of the most widely read and discussed authors of the twentieth century Europe. His stories are among the darkest in literature, with grotesque vision of the world in which alienated and disturbed characters make a futile search for salvation. His best known works are The Trial and The Metamorphosis.

Kafka was born on July 3, 1883 in Prague, into a middle-class Jewish family to Hermann, a successful businessman, and Julie Kafka. He had two younger brothers, both of whom died in infancy and three younger sisters Gabriele, Valerie, and Ottilie, who all died in concentration camps.

Kafka was educated in German schools, not Czech, although he understood Czech. He did well in schools, especially classes like Latin, Greek and history. When he went to University, he decided to study chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. He obtained the degree of Doctor of Law in 1906.

During the university years he met a fellow Jew, literary artist, Max Brod, who became his lifelong friend and advocate.

After graduation, he worked for an insurance company for many years - a job he did not enjoy. But he didn't show any indifference towards it. As a safety professional he actually invented the safety helmet and received a medal for his invention.

During his lifetime, Kafka published only a few short stories and was known as a writer only within his small literary, intellectual circle in Prague. He never finished any of his novels and prior to his death asked his friend, Max Brod, to destroy all of his works after his death.

He wrote most of his works before WWI. The Metamorphosis is his most famous work. It's a masterfully written short story about a travelling salesman who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Bizarre and thought-provoking like most of his writings.

Kafka was such a unique writer that his name inspired a term - Kafkaesque. The word means something resembling the literary work of Kafka - something absurd, bizarre, disorienting, opposite of reason and logic.

Kafka died from complications related to tuberculosis on June 3, 1924 near Vienna. He was buried in Prague.

About the Author:

Paul Hooke is a photographer and a book lover. Franz Kafka The Trial is his favorite book. To learn more about Kafka, take a look at Franz Kafka bio.

Want To Paint With Oils? - Here Is What You Ought To Know!...

By Anna Meenaghan

Oil painting itself dates back to ancient times in Europe. It was discovered in caves where men mixed together soot, earth and animal fats to make the earliest oil paints. These were at that time used to compose their imagery on the actual cave walls.

Later it was revealed that, if oils were taken from nuts plus linseed and were mixed along with pigment, it would make up bright oily colours. The beauty of oils is the fact that, if you do make errors on your canvas, you can get the colour off if you dip a piece of rag in turpentine and just wipe it off.

Therefore, what do you in actual fact need? First of all, I would advise you to wear a big apron, or some kind of overall, before you start to paint. A palette knife along with a palette. The knife you will discover very handy to move oil on to your picture, but you can what's more move the paint about with this.

Now, if you can afford an easel this will be an asset and there are various types to pick from. Old jam jars can be used for washing out your brushes or solvents. Old pieces of rag, or dippers also, are rather a good idea as they can be clipped on to the edge of your palette to contain solvent as well as painting mediums.

Solvents, for example distilled turpentine and white spirit, for thinning oil colours and also for cleaning your equipment and brushes, can be used to great effect. Charcoal too is useful for outlining the subject that you want to paint. For instance for your fundamental palette, colours I have listed now are a general type of palette which,needless to say, you can always add to.

Cadium lemon, yellow and red, raw umber, titanium white, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, viridian hue, french ultramarine, pthalo blue, permanent alizarin crimson, and permanent rose.

It follows that, besides paper or a canvas, you can lay oil paint on top of glass, hardboard, walls, wooden furniture and plaster if you prepare it to start with and make use of a primer.

Going to brushes, fine hog brushes are in all probability the best option as they maintain their form and are pretty good for fine detailing in your masterpiece. While for brush types, a large or medium sized flat brush works well. A medium no. 6, or a large no. 10 or 12.

These are good when you want to paint on large areas of colour. If you then want to do thinner, narrow lines you can use the tip of your brush. Very good too for blending your colour around your canvas.

Now for scumbling or dabbing on small patches of colour. You could use a medium sized round no. 6 brush, which would work well too for putting on broad areas of colour. For very fine details, and even highlighting, you could try a no. 2 small sized round brush.

If you would like to sketch outside, canvas boards are good, quite strong, and, I would say, are more manageable as they take up less space. Stretched canvases are in all probability the most used, but you can even construct these yourself.

The other alternative of surface left to you is oil colour paper which has a textured surface, but can be used for oils or acrylics.

About the Author:

If you liked this article by Anna Meenaghan then you can find a whole lot more at her online interactive art gallery website. Here you can find anything related to art ranging from realism to abstract paintings, as well as video interviews with artists etc.