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60 free Oscar Wilde trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Oscar Wilde trivia quiz covers the whole arc, from Merrion Square to the Hôtel d'Alsace. The easy questions cover the only novel, the most famous comedy, the city he was born in, the lover known as Bosie, the two years' hard labour and the Paris cemetery where lipstick used to cover his tomb. From there it moves through the life: the surgeon father and nationalist poet mother, Portora and Trinity, the Magdalen rooms full of lilies and blue china, the Newdigate Prize, the D'Oyly Carte lecture tour, Constance Lloyd, Tite Street and The Woman's World. The harder end covers the calling card misspelt 'somdomite', the barrister who cross-examined him, the £5,000 bail, cell C.3.3, the treadmill and oakum, the trooper whose hanging became The Ballad of Reading Gaol, the alias Sebastian Melmoth, the Dreyfus document, the deathbed baptism, the 2017 pardon and the library card returned in 2025. Every answer was checked against Wilde's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our classic literature and famous authors quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Oscar Wilde born in 1854?
Dublin
The house at 21 Westland Row is now the Oscar Wilde Centre of Trinity College.
Q 02Under what pen name did Wilde's mother Jane write poetry for the Young Irelanders?
Speranza
It is Italian for 'hope'; she liked to believe, without foundation, that she had Italian ancestry.
Q 03What was the profession of Wilde's father, Sir William Wilde?
Ear and eye surgeon
His dispensary for the city's poor was the forerunner of the Eye and Ear Hospital; he was knighted for census work.
Q 04How did Wilde's two elder half-sisters Mary and Emily die in 1871?
Their dresses caught fire at a dance
One brushed a candelabra or fire; her sister tried to douse the flames in the snow and burned too.
Q 05Wilde's poem 'Requiescat' was written in memory of whom?
His sister Isola, who died aged nine
He called her 'a golden ray of sunshine dancing about our home'.
Q 06Where in Enniskillen was Wilde educated from 1864 to 1871?
Portora Royal School
He claimed classmates thought him a prodigy for reading two facing pages at once and a three-volume novel in half an hour.
Q 07Which Trinity College professor did Wilde call 'my first and best teacher'?
J. P. Mahaffy
Wilde helped him with the book Social Life in Greece and was later rusticated from Oxford after returning late from a Greek trip with him.
Q 08Which prize, Trinity College's highest academic award, did Wilde win in Greek?
The Berkeley Gold Medal
It set him up for a demyship at Oxford, which he 'won easily'.
Q 09At which Oxford college did Wilde read Greats from 1874 to 1878?
Magdalen
He decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers and objets d'art, and was rejected by the Oxford Union.
Q 10What did Wilde famously say he found 'harder and harder every day to live up to'?
His blue china
Aesthetes adopted the line as a slogan; critics called it terribly vacuous.
Q 11On the day appointed for his 1878 Catholic baptism, what did Wilde send Father Bowden instead of himself?
A bunch of altar lilies
He balked at pledging himself to any creed, though he kept a lifelong interest in Catholic liturgy and was received on his deathbed.
Q 12Which two Oxford figures were the leading influences on Wilde's aestheticism?
Walter Pater and John Ruskin
Wilde carried Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance on his travels and called it 'that book that has had such a strange influence over my life'.
Q 13For which poem did Wilde win the 1878 Newdigate Prize at Oxford?
'Ravenna'
Q 21At which Chelsea address did the Wildes make their home?
Tite Street
Queensberry turned up there uninvited in 1894; the address was No 16, now 34.
Q 22What was the original title of the magazine Wilde edited from 1887 and soon renamed?
The Lady's World
He added serious articles on parenting and politics but tired of office life and left in 1889; his salary was £6 a week.
Q 23When Wilde wished he had made a witticism, which artist replied 'You will, Oscar, you will'?
James McNeill Whistler
An 1889 article claiming Wilde passed off Whistler's jokes as his own ended their friendship.
It recalled his visit to the Italian city the previous year; he read it at Encaenia and graduated with a double first.
Q 14Wilde's childhood sweetheart Florence Balcombe married which author in 1878?
Bram Stoker
Wilde wrote to her about 'the two sweet years – the sweetest years of all my youth', then left Ireland for good.
Q 15Which impresario invited Wilde to lecture across North America in 1882 to help promote Patience?
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Patience had caricatured aestheticism; a tour planned for four months ran nearly a year.
Q 16In which Colorado mining town did Wilde claim to have drunk whiskey with miners on his American tour?
Leadville
The San Francisco Chronicle said the city was divided between those who found him an original thinker and those who found him 'the most pretentious fraud ever perpetrated on a groaning public'.
Q 17Which famous beauty, introduced to Wilde in 1877, did he tutor in Latin and encourage to take up acting?
Lillie Langtry
She wrote that he 'possessed a remarkably fascinating and compelling personality'.
Q 18How did Punch sum up the 1881 collection Poems, punning on its author's name?
'The poet is Wilde, but his poetry's tame'
The Oxford Union voted narrowly to condemn the book for plagiarism and returned its presentation copy.
Q 19Whom did Wilde marry on 29 May 1884?
Constance Lloyd
She had an allowance of £250 a year; their Chelsea house was renovated over seven months at great expense.
Q 20What were the names of Wilde's two sons?
Cyril and Vyvyan
Vyvyan later wrote Son of Oscar Wilde; his own son Merlin Holland became Wilde's biographer and defender.
Q 24Which 1888 Wilde collection includes the title tale of a jewelled statue and a swallow?
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
A House of Pomegranates followed in 1891, dedicated to his wife.
Q 25Wilde's 'The Portrait of Mr. W. H.' argues that Shakespeare's sonnets were written for whom?
A boy actor called Willie Hughes
'You must believe in Willie Hughes,' Wilde told a friend, 'I almost do, myself.'
Q 26What is the title of Wilde's only political essay, which argued for abolishing private property?
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
George Orwell summarised its vision as a world 'populated by artists, each striving after perfection'.
Q 27In which American periodical did The Picture of Dorian Gray first appear, in July 1890?
Lippincott's Monthly
For the 1891 book he added six chapters, cut some homoerotic passages and added a preface of twenty-two epigrams.
Q 28How many novels did Wilde write?
Just one
The Daily Chronicle called it 'unclean' and 'poisonous'; The Guardian later ranked it among the 100 best novels in English.
Q 29In which language did Wilde write Salomé?
French
The Lord Chamberlain refused it a licence for depicting biblical characters; it was first staged in Paris in 1896 while he was in prison.
Q 30Who provided the illustrations for the 1894 English edition of Salomé?
Aubrey Beardsley
The translation was by Lord Alfred Douglas.