Oscar Wilde and the Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of being Earnest was first published in1899. 

 Wilde had overseen the publication himself, in exile in his dismal lodgings in Paris. The wallpaper in his room was tasteless, he quipped ‘one of us has to go…’ 

 Earnest was played in 1895 just before his disastrous prosecution and subsequent imprisonment. He was then at the peak of his success in both London and Paris. People wanted to know him then but had now abandoned him. He never saw his children from that point onwards. The contrast in life could not be greater. He said: ‘I have been rich; I have been poor. Rich is better…’ 

Borges the Argentinian writer saw Wilde’s society plays as advocating happiness. And that was what Wilde wished. His life however became a tragedy from which he was unable to escape.  

James Hodgson in Oscar Wilde: Philosopher, Poet and Playwright brings Wilde’s ideas into sharp relief. Did Wilde have something enduring to say? What was his influence? It strangely subverts the consciousness -  

On his release from prison Wilde was escorted away from Reading Gaol by a Warder to avoid the press. On the station Wilde exclaimed on seeing a bush alive with flowers: The world ! The World! The beautiful world... to which the Warder replied – Come now Sir – there is only one man in England who would talk like that on a Railway station...