Wilde made a name for himself as a dandy in his early adult life, but that was deceptively a period of financial precarity and desperate work. In fact, the family was nearly bankrupt upon William’s death, when Wilde was just 21 years old. The couple raised Wilde - born Octoin middle-class comfort, but would not have been able to send him to Trinity College, and then to Oxford, had he not won successive scholarships. (James Connolly, who would be one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, first founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party.) While less overtly political, Wilde’s father William also passed up the prosperous career of a private physician to found a charitable hospital. His mother Jane was an outspoken supporter of Irish nationalism, which had a strong socialist current, in contrast with English imperial capitalism. But although Wilde is most often remembered as an aristocratic dandy (a “snob to the marrow of his being,” according to Shaw), the politics that he espoused were indeed a form of socialism - namely, libertarian socialism.Īlthough Wilde is remembered as an aristocratic dandy, the politics that he espoused were indeed a form of socialism.Ĭonsidering his upbringing in mid-19th century Dublin, it’s not surprising that Wilde felt an affinity for socialism. It’s true that Wilde’s views departed radically from Shaw’s and those of the Fabian Society. Wilde was so taken by the subject that he produced his own views on it in an essay entitled, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” In Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius, biographer Barbara Belford recounts how Shaw reacted to the essay, saying, “It was very witty and entertaining, but had nothing whatever to do with socialism.”
Some time later, Shaw spoke at a meeting of the Society in London, with an unexpected attendee: Oscar Wilde. In 1884, George Bernard Shaw joined the newly formed Fabian Society, which was dedicated to advancing democratic socialism in Great Britain, primarily through the gradual dissemination of socialist ideas. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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