Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Filed under the name Oscar · July 23, 2026
Oscar Wilde wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "The Importance of Being Earnest," and he's remembered above all for a wit and a mastery of language that still gets quoted well over a century after he put pen to paper. I taught third grade for thirty-eight years and I always told my students that words, chosen carefully, could do more work than a whole page of ordinary ones, and Wilde is about the finest proof of that lesson I know of — a man who could apparently say more in one clever line than most writers manage in a whole chapter. I don't know that I'd have approved of everything about the man's life, being an old-fashioned churchgoing woman myself, but I've never once let my own opinions about somebody's living keep me from admiring genuine talent when I see it plain in front of me. A gift for language like that is a gift regardless of who's holding it, and I taught enough kids to know a real one when it turns up.