South Canterbury Times - Saturday, April 6, 1895

Oscar Wilde, the defeated plaintiff in the libel action which has furnished us with some long cable messages recently, is a man of sufficient prominence at Home to be given a place in the volume entitled "Men of the Time." From this source we learn that he was born in Dublin in 1856, and is the son of Sir W. R. W. Wilde, M.D., surgeon-oculist to the Queen, and otherwise well known, while his mother, Lady Wilde, is a poetess. Oscar Wilde was well educated, and as a scholar he carried off numerous first prizes. He went to London in 1879 and started the "aesthetic movement." He published poems in 1880, and in 1881 lectured on Art in America. He has written plays, a novel "Dorian Grey," and contributed many critical articles to the leading magazines. It is understood that the aesthetic craze, originated by Wilde, is the motive of the popular burlesque opera "Patience." The Marquis of Queensberry is not a "man of the time." He is a Scottish Peer of Drumfriesshire, a Douglas, and his son Lord Alfred Douglas, mentioned in the cablegrams, is now five-and-twenty years of age.