Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical fiction and gothic horror novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The novel-length version was published in April 1891.
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London.
Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev was a Russian anarcho-communist, part of the Russian nihilist movement, known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including revolutionary terror.
Salome is a one-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde. The original version of the play was first published in French in 1893; an English translation was published a year later. The play depicts the attempted seduction of Jokanaan by Salome, stepdaughter of Herod Antipas; her dance of the seven veils; the execution of Jokanaan at Salome's instigation; and her death on Herod's orders.
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich was a Russian socialist activist, Menshevik writer and revolutionary. She is widely known for her correspondence with Karl Marx, in which she put into question the necessity of a capitalist industrialisation prior to socialism, in the context of the fact that there already were living farmer communities in Russia that had developed practices and cultures that had a communist component.
Pavel Borisovich Axelrod was an early Russian Marxist revolutionary. Along with Georgi Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, and Leo Deutsch, he was one of the members of the first organization of Russian Marxists, Emancipation of Labor. After the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he was part of the Menshevik faction, with which he was identified until his death.
A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde is "a new and original play of modern life", in four acts, first given on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, London. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirises English upper-class society. It has been revived from time to time since his death in 1900, but has been widely regarded as the least successful of his four drawing room plays.
Vera Nikolayevna Figner Filippova was a Russian revolutionary and political activist.
Dmitry Vladimirovich Karakozov was a Russian political activist and the first revolutionary in the Russian Empire to make an attempt on the life of a tsar. His attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander II failed and Karakozov was executed.
Robert Harborough Sherard was an English writer and journalist. He was a friend, and the first biographer, of Oscar Wilde, as well as being Wilde's most prolific biographer in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Duchess of Padua is a five-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde, set in Padua and written in blank verse. It was written for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while Wilde was in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York City under the title Guido Ferranti on 26 January 1891, where it ran for three weeks. It has been rarely revived or studied.
Union Square Theatre was the name of two different theatres near Union Square, Manhattan, New York City. The first was a Broadway theatre that opened in 1870, was converted into a cinema in 1921 and closed in 1936. The second was an Off-Broadway theatre that opened in 1985 and closed in 2016.
Salomé is a 1908 opera in one act by Antoine Mariotte to a libretto based on the 1891 French play Salome by Oscar Wilde. However, that work was itself inspired by Flaubert's Herodias. Mariotte began to compose his opera before the far more famous treatment of the same source by German composer Richard Strauss (Salome), but his premiered after the Strauss work.
The Trial of the 193 was a series of criminal trials held in Russia in 1877-1878 under the rule of Tsar Alexander II. The defendants were 193 socialist students and other “revolutionaries” charged with populist “unrest” and propaganda against the Russian Empire. The Trial of the 193 was the largest political trial in the history of Tsarist Russia. It coincided with a phase in the Russo-Turkish War when the Russian army was stalled outside Pleven, killing hopes of a swift victory and so undermining support for the government, and there was widespread disgust at the order given by Governor of St Petersburg, General Trepov to flog an imprisoned student, Arkhip Bogolyubov. The Tsar's brother, Grand Duke Konstantin advised postponing the trial, but the Minister for Justice, Count Konstantin Pahlen, ignored his advice.
De Bannelingen (The Exiles) is a 1911 Dutch silent drama film directed by Léon Boedels and Caroline van Dommelen. It was Caroline van Dommelen's first film. It was an adaptation of the play Vera; or, The Nihilists by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde's life and death have generated numerous biographies.
On 13 March [O.S. 1 March] 1881, Alexander II, the Emperor of Russia, was assassinated in Saint Petersburg, Russia while returning to the Winter Palace from Mikhailovsky Manège in a carriage.
The Sphinx is a 174-line poem by Oscar Wilde, written from the point of view of a young man who questions the Sphinx in lurid detail on the history of her sexual adventures, before finally renouncing her attractions and turning to his crucifix. It was written over a period of twenty years, stretching from Wilde's years as an Oxford student up to the poem's publication in an édition de luxe in 1894. The Sphinx drew on a wide range of sources, both ancient and modern, but particularly on various works of the French Decadent movement. Though at first coldly received by critics it is now generally recognized as Wilde's finest Decadent poem, and has been described as "unrivalled: a quintessential piece of fin-de-siècle art".
Marie Prescott was an American stage actress and playwright. She is best known for starring in and co-producing Vera; or, The Nihilists, the first play by Oscar Wilde.
