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Biography:  Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Although the playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is most often remembered today as a homosexual martyr, before his conviction on charges of Gross Indecency he was already famous as the outrageously effete evangelist of an artistic movement called aestheticism.  Wilde practiced the aesthetic credo, "Art for Art's sake," in his own life and appointed himself an arbiter of sophistication and good taste.  His celebrity made him Britain's most notorious sodomite when he was convicted of consorting with  A young Oscar Wilde male prostitutes in 1895 and popularized an image of homosexuals as urbane sophisticates.  A persistent stereotype of homosexuals as talented dressers of women and windows is derived in part from the example of Oscar Wilde. Wilde's trials and the sensational publicity that surrounded them made him a symbol for homosexuals worldwide and inspired activists like Magnus Hirschfeld to work hard in the cause of homosexual emancipation.

Photo Credits:  The photo of Wilde is reproduced courtesy of the Archiv und Bibliothek des Schwulen Museums.  Berlin.  The photo originally appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld, 1930, Geschlechtskunde auf Grunddreissingjährur Forschung und Erfahrung bearbeit, Stuttgart:  Julius Püttman, Verlagsbuchhandlung.

© 1999
Andrew Wikholm
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