The Heartbreaking Love Triangle Oscar Wilde Was Involved In
The Irish poet, playwright, and novelist Oscar Wilde is remembered for his sophisticated wit, his turn of phrase, his legal troubles stemming from his sexuality, and his novel about the guy who sold his soul to a painting in order to stay young. Many remember his high-profile and ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit against his lover’s father for libel, and how that failed case was used against him in criminal court, resulting in his imprisonment for “gross indecency,” aka being gay. And these days, too many remember him for things he never even said or wrote. As HuffPost points out, of the people who share quotes falsely attributed to him on the internet, Wilde would have thought: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
With such a dramatic and hectic life, it’s no surprise that some details get overshadowed by the more salient points. This is true even of details like the fact that Wilde was caught up in a love triangle with another writer who ended up becoming one of the biggest cultural influences of the modern age.
Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker were in love with the same woman
In 1878, Oscar Wilde discovered that he was in a love triangle with fellow Irish writer Bram Stoker, the man who would go on to write “Dracula” and define how people would picture vampires for generations to come. According to The Paris Review, Oscar had a thing for a local Dublin girl named Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe (pictured above), whom he described as “an exquisitely pretty girl.” He said she had “the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw and not a sixpence of money.” Oscar had taken her on a date to a church service and given her a cross with his name engraved on it, but then he learned that she was engaged to Stoker.
It appears to have been a classic case of long distance romance gone stale (it never works, so just stop it already). Oscar was often away from Dublin, either studying at Oxford or traveling in Greece, and Stoker was around. He was a regular at Oscar’s mom’s get-togethers, and one time even went to Christmas dinner at the Wilde house while Oscar was in England. In the end, Dracula’s future creator married Balcombe that year, and the two remained together until the author’s death in 1912.
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