Literature


Oscar Wilde


Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the tragedy of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and their son showed his intelligence early, becoming fluent in French and German. At university Wilde read Greats, and proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. However, he became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism (led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin) though he also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism (and later converted on his deathbed).


After university Wilde moved to London, into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities; he published a book of poems, lectured America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the major personalities of his day.At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays; and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, combined with larger social themes, drew Wilde to writing drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris, but it was refused a licence. 








Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde sued his lover's father for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and imprisoned for two years, held to hard labour. In prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.









Selected works









Emily Dickinson





Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content. A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.In the last two decades of Dickinson's life, she wrote fewer than fifty poems a year, perhaps because of continuing eye trouble, but more probably because she had to take more responsibility in running the household. Her father died in 1874, and a year later her mother suffered a stroke that left her disabled until her death in 1882. Dickinson's health failed noticeably after a nervous collapse in 1884, and on May 15, 1886, she died.


It is clear that Dickinson could not have written to please publishers, who were not ready to risk her striking style and originality. Had she published during her lifetime, negative public criticism might have driven her to an even more solitary state of existence, even to silence. "If fame belonged to me," she told Higginson, "I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase.… My barefoot rank is better." The twentieth century lifted her without doubt to the first rank among poets.






  Some of Emily Dickinson poems








Unfulfilled to Observation —
Unit, like Death, for Whom?
Until the Desert knows
Unto a broken heart
A Bird came down the Walk
A Burdock — clawed my Gown
A Cap of Lead across the sky
A Charm invests a face
A chilly Peace infests the Grass
A Clock stopped —
Best Witchcraft is Geometry
Betrothed to Righteousness might be
Better — than Music! For I — who heard it —
Between My Country — and the Others —
Between the form of Life and Life
Bind me — I still can sing —
Birthday of but a single pang
Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple
Bless God, he went as soldiers,
Bliss is the plaything of the child —
Bloom — is Result — to meet a Flower
Bloom upon the Mountain — stated —
Blossoms will run away,
Bound — a trouble
Confirming All who analyze

Conjecturing a Climate
Conscious am I in my Chamber,
Consulting summer's clock,
Contained in this short Life
Cosmopolities without a plea
Could — I do more — for Thee
Could Hope inspect her Basis
Could I but ride indefinite
Could mortal lip divine
Could that sweet Darkness where they dwell
Count not that far that can be had
Did life's penurious length
Did Our Best Moment last
Did the Harebell loose her girdle
Did We abolish Frost
Did we disobey Him?
Did you ever stand in a Cavern's Mouth —
Distance — is not the Realm of Fox
Distrustful of the Gentian
Do People moulder equally,
Dominion lasts until obtained —
Don't put up my Thread and Needle —
Doom is the House without the Door
Doubt Me! My Dim Companion!
Down Time's quaint stream
Experiment to me
Extol thee — could I? Then I will
Exultation is the going
Facts by our side are never sudden
Fairer through Fading — as the Day
Faith is a fine invention
Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
Faithful to the end Amende




My Letter To The World - Emily Dickinson by 



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