That Oscar Wilde found much to ridicule in the conventional values of late Victorian society is evident to anyone who has turned a page of his work. What is less known is that the playwright and poet envisioned a very different society as not only desirable but possible, and penned a political essay — “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”  — in which he outlined his political beliefs. One of Wilde’s most frequently quoted lines — often reproduced without reference to its source — is contained within that work: “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Wilde lived a full life, albeit a short one. Born in October 1854 at Dublin’s Westland Row, but raised primarily at nearby Merrion Square, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was the son of two of the great eccentrics — and intellects — of nineteenth-century Dublin. His father, William Wilde, was a pioneering surgeon and medical authority, who accepted a Knighthood in Dublin Castle, the home of British rule on the island of Ireland. By comparison, his mother Jane Wilde spent much of her life seeking to break that connection with Britain. A folklorist, poet, and essayist, she wrote under the pen name Speranza, the Italian word for hope.