ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Oscar Wilde's creative abilities went through a similar development, albeit one not nearly so rapid or so sweeping. He began to publish while he was still an Oxford undergraduate, but his initial efforts at poetry invoked a conventional tone and presented programmatic associations of well-known literary models that did little to differentiate his efforts from those of his contemporaries. The same holds true for the plays written during his early London years. Like his other earlier writings, these efforts evinced far less performative flamboyance and much more attentiveness to convention than did his concurrent attempts at establishing a public persona. At various times he gave greater emphasis to his art or to his brand, but his approach towards one always had the other in mind. In consequence, no full interpretation of a work by Wilde can ignore the range of extra-textual elements shaping it.
