His first published volume, Poems, which met with some degree of approbation, appeared at this time. Largely on the strength of his public persona, Wilde undertook a lecture tour to the United States in 1882, where he saw his play Vera open-unsuccessfully-in New York. By 1879 he was already known as a wit and a dandy soon after, in fact, he was satirized in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience. He subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pater, whose aestheticism was taken to its radical extreme in Wilde's work. He was born to a middle-class Irish family (his father was a surgeon) and was trained as a scholarship boy at Trinity College, Dublin. Flamboyant man-about-town, Oscar Wilde had a reputation that preceded him, especially in his early career.
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