What Was Oscar Wilde’s First Successful Comedy?

Although Wilde was already a well known public figure and writer in 1892, his first big stage success came with the play "Lady Windermere's Fan" in that year. Like much of Wilde's writing, it deals with hypocrisy, and the unthinking cruelty of "good" people.

Lady Windermere is a stern, Puritanical young woman, very devoted to her husband Lord Windermere. She is horrified when she finds that he has been giving money to, and –she assumes – having an affair with the notorious Mrs Erlynne, a much older woman and almost a social outcast. He feels unable to tell her that Mrs Erlynne is in fact her own mother, whom she believes dead but who actually ran away from her husband and baby daughter many years ago. Mrs Erlynne is now blackmailing Lord Windermere to keep quiet about who she is.

Because her husband refuses to break off contact with this woman, Lady Windermere plans to run away with a friend, Lord Darlington; her mother finds this out, and in a moment of maternal self-sacrifice which surprises even her, plots to save her.

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