of London's most
popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He
was born in 1854 inDublin, the second of three children. His mom , Jane Wilde, under
the pseudonym "Speranza" , wrote poetry for the revolutionary
“Young Irelanders” in 1848 and was a lifelong Irish nationalist.
William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and
eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864. He also wrote books about
Irish archaeology and peasant folklore. Until he was nine, Oscar
Wilde was educated at home, where a French and a German
governess taught him their languages. Until his early twenties,
Wilde spemt his summer at the villa, Moytura House, his father
built in Cong County Mayo. There the young Wilde and his brother
Willie played with George Moore.