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• 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde

The 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde

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• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 May 2003 00.00 BST

Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's grandson and the sole executor of his estate. He is the author of Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess, the first unabridged publication of the famous libel trial.

1. 'Oscar' is the best-known 'Wilde'

True, but unfairly so. His father, Sir William, was a remarkable Dublin doctor whose medical work on the 1851 and 1861 censuses earned him his knighthood, and is still referred to today as essential source material for 19th century Irish history. Sir William also published important contributions to the study of Celtic antiquities and Irish folklore. Oscar's mother, Jane, was a prominent Irish Nationalist and poet who was nearly imprisoned for her inflammatory anti-English writing in 1848. As Oscar would write from prison in 1897: "She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured not merely in literature, art, archaeology and science, but in the public history of my own country in its evolution as a nation."

2. He was homosexual from his schooldays

This is most unlikely, to judge from his correspondence. He seems to have been infatuated with Florence Balcombe (who later married Bram Stoker) for two years until he left Oxford in 1878, and had previously flirted with other young women in Dublin. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884, swiftly had two children with her and, by his own account, was blissfully happy in the first few years of his marriage. His 'conversion' to homosexuality probably came about in 1886/7 with a young man who was to remain a lifelong friend, Robert Ross.

3. He coasted through university, with a reputation for langorousness and a love of lilies

Oscar was certainly influenced by the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin and Walter Pater while at Oxford, and he adopted the pose of an effete young man, but he went up as a scholar to Magdalen and came down with a double first in classics and the Newdigate prize for poetry. This took considerable application as his contemporaries later testified and his surviving Oxford notebooks demonstrate.

4. Apart from writing a couple of plays, a few children's stories, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Picture of Dorian Gray he doesn't seem to have done much

Oscar's 'serious' side is often overlooked. He spent a year in the US in 1882 lecturing about the decorative arts; he edited a high-profile woman's magazine for two years; he wrote thought-provoking and controversial critical essays as well as many art exhibition, theatre and book reviews. He also applied twice, unsuccessfully, to become an Inspector of Schools; his effect on English education could have been startling.

5. Being Irish was just an accident of birth; he was an English author, surely?

In the sense that The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Winderemere's Fan are archetypically 'English' plays - perhaps; but there is a profound Irishness underlying much of what Oscar wrote and thought, especially in his correspondence. He may have remarked that the first thing he forgot at Oxford was his Irish accent, but when his play Salomé was banned he openly accused the English of being narrow-minded saying, "I am not English; I'm Irish which is quite another thing."