William Wilde

Sir William Robert Wills Wilde (1815–April 19, 1876) was an Irish eye and ear surgeon, as well as an author of significant works on medicine, archaeology and folklore, particularly concerning his native Ireland. He is now best known as the father of Oscar Wilde.

William Wilde was born at Kilkeevin, near Castlerea, in County Roscommon and received his initial education at the Elphin Diocesan School in Elphin, County Roscommon and subsequently, in 1837, earned his medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was awarded a knighthood in 1864 for his medical contributions and his involvement with the Irish census - he had been appointed medical commissioner to the Irish census in 1841. He ran his own hospital - St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital for Diseases of the Eye and Ear - in Dublin and was appointed to serve as Oculist-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. At one point, Wilde performed surgery on the father of another famous Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw. Wilde had a very successful medical practice and was assisted in it by his natural son, Henry Wilson, who had been trained in Dublin, Vienna, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Paris. Wilson’s presence enabled Wilde to travel and he visited Scandinavia, where he received an honorary degree from Uppsala, and was welcomed in Stockholm by Retzius, among others. King Karl XV of Sweden conferred on him the Nordstjärneorden (Order of the North Star).

Wilde married the poet Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee in 1851, who wrote and published under the name of Speranza. The couple had two sons: Willie and Oscar Wilde, and a daughter, Isola Francesca, who died in childhood. In addition to Henry Wilson, William Wilde had two other illegitimate children by earlier liaisons, Emily and Mary Wilde, both of whom died in a tragic fire accident in 1871.

Publications

 * The Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe, and Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, 1840.
 * The beauties of the Boyne and the Blackwater, 1849
 * Lough Corrib, its Shores and Islands, first published in 1867.
 * The closing years of the life of Dean Swift.
 * The Epidemics of Ireland.