Oscar Milosz 1886, at St. Alexander's Church in Warsaw. In 1889, when he was 12, his parents placed him at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. He began writing poems in 1894 and started to frequent artistic circles, meeting Oscar Wilde and Jean Moréas. After finishing at the Lycée, he enrolled at the École des langues orientales, where he studied Syriac and Hebrew. His first book of verse, "Le Poème des Décadences", appeared in 1899. In the first years of the twentieth century, Milosz travelled widely in Europe and North Africa and explored many foreign literatures. A European poet of the
The Manuscripts of Oscar Wilde and drafts by Wilde, supported by a nearly complete collection of printed editions of his works make useful research material for modern biographers. Original photographs, caricatures, theatre programs, and news cuttings are available. In looking over the material it can be seen that the image of the indolent Wilde, carefree and idle for much of the time, is misleading, although in some sense it is a myth that was perpetuated by the author himself. Wilde had two plays running in London's West End before the scandal erupted. Rehearsals for "The Importance of Being Earnest" even took place on Christmas Day,