director of the Hofburg theatre in succession to Franz Dingelstedt, an office he held until 1887. In this year he returned to his native town of Rostock, and remained actively engaged in literary production. Wilbrandt is distinguished both as a dramatist and novelist. His merits were acknowledged by the award of the Grillparzer prize on two occasions—in 1875 for the tragedy Gracchus der Volkstribun, and in 1890 for his dramatic poem Der Meister von Palmyra, while in 1878 he received the Schiller prize for his dramatic productions.
Among his plays may be mentioned the tragedies, Arria und Messalina, (1874), Nero (1876); Kriemhild (1877); the comedies Unerreichbar (1870), Die Maler (1872), Jugendliebe (1873) and Der Kampf ums Dasein (1874); and the drama Die Tochter des Herrn Fabricius (1883). Among his novels the following deserve notice:—Meister Amor (1880); Hermann Ifinger (1892); Der Dornenweg (1894); Die Osterinsel (1895); Die Rothenburger (1895); and Hildegard Mahlmann (1897). He also published translations of Sophocles and Euripides (1866), Gedichte (1874, 1889 and 1907), and a volume of Erinnerungen (1905).
See V. Klemperer, Adolf Wilbrandt. Eine Studie über seine Werke (1907), and A. Stern, Studien zur Literatur der Gegenwart (3rd ed., 1905).
WILBYE, JOHN, English 16th-century madrigal composer,
was born probably at Bury St Edmunds, but the details of his
life are obscure. A set of madrigals by him appeared in 1598
and a second in 1608, the two sets containing sixty-four pieces;
and from a few contributions known to have been made by him
to other contemporary sets, we can infer that he was alive in
1614. He is the most famous of all the English madrigalists;
his pieces have long been favourites and are included in modern
collections.
WILD, JONATHAN (c. 1682–1725), English criminal, was born about 1682 at Wolverhampton, where his father was a wig-maker. After being apprenticed to a local buckle-maker, he went to London to learn his trade, and, getting into debt, was imprisoned for several years. The acquaintance of many criminals which he made in prison he turned to account after his release by setting up as a receiver of stolen goods. Wild shrewdly realized
that it was safer, and in most cases more profitable, to dispose
of such property by returning it to its legitimate owners than
to sell it, with the attendant risks, in the open market, and he
thus built up an immense business, posing as a recover er of
stolen goods, the thieves receiving a commission on the price
paid for recovery. A special act of parliament was passed by
which receivers of stolen property were made accessories to the
theft, but Wild’s professed “lost property office” had little
difficulty in evading the new law, and became so prosperous
that two branch offices were opened. From profiting by robberies
in which he had no share. Wild naturally came to arrange
robberies himself, and he devised and controlled a huge organization,
which plundered London and its approaches wholesale.
Such thieves as refused to work with him received short shrift.
The notorious Jack Sheppard, wearied of Wild’s exactions, at
last refused to deal with him, whereupon Wild secured his arrest,
and himself arrested Sheppard’s confederate, “Blueskin.”
In return for Wild’s services in tracking down such thieves as
he did not himself control, the authorities for some time tolerated
the offences of his numerous agents, each a specialist in a
particular kind of robbery, and so themselves strengthened his
position.
If an arrest were made, Wild had a plentiful supply
of false evidence at hand to establish his agents' alibi, and he
did not hesitate to obtain the conviction, by similar means, of
such thieves as refused to recognize his authority. Such stolen
property as could not be returned to the owners with profit
was taken aferoad in a sloop purchased for this work. At last
either the authorities became more strict or Wild less cautious.
He was arrested, tried at the Old Bailey, and after being acquitted
on a charge of steaUng lace, found guilty of taking a reward for
restoring it to the owner without informing the police. He was
hanged at Tyburn on the 24th of May 1725.
WILDBAD, a watering-place of Germany, in the kingdom of
Württemberg, picturesquely situated 1475 ft. above the sea,
in the romantic pine-clad gorge of the Enz in the Black Forest,
28 m. W. of Stuttgart and 14 E. of Baden-Baden by rail. Pop.
(1905) 3734. It contains an Evangelical, a Roman Catholic
and an English church, and has some small manufactures
(cigars, paper and toys). Its thermal alkaline springs have a
temperature of 90°–100° Fahr. and are used for bathing in cases
of paralysis, rheumatism, gout, neuralgia and similar ailments.
The fact that the springs rise within the baths, and are thus
used at the fountain-head, is considered to contribute materially
to their curative value. The water is used internally for affections
of the stomach and digestive organs, and of the kidneys, bladder, &c. Wildbad possesses all the usual arrangements for the comfort and amusement of the visitors (over 15,000 annually), including large and well-appointed hotels, a Kurhaus, a Trink-Halle and promenades. The neighbourhood is picturesque, the most attractive spot being the Wildsee, of which legends are told.
See W. T. v. Renz, Die Kur zu Wildbad (with Guide, Wildbad, 1888), and Weizsäcker, Wildbad (2nd ed., 1905).
WILDE, OSCAR O’FLAHERTIE WILLS (1856–1900), English author, son of Sir William Wilde, a famous Irish surgeon, was born in Dublin on the 15th of October 1856; his mother, Jane Francisca Elgee, was well known in Dublin as a graceful writer of verse and prose, under the pen-name of “Speranza.” Having distinguished himself in classics at Trinity College, Dublin, Oscar Wilde went to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1874, and won the Newdigate prize in 1878 with his poem “Ravenna,” besides taking a first-class in classical Moderations and in Literae Humaniores. But his career Oxford, brilliant intellectually as he showed himself to be, was chiefly signalized by the part he played in what came to be known as the aesthetic movement. He adopted what to undergraduates appeared the effeminate pose of casting scorn on manly sports, wearing his hair long, decorating his rooms with peacock’s feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d’art, which he declared his desire to “live up to,” affecting a lackadaisical manner, and professing intense emotions on the subject of “art for art’s sake”—then a new-fangled doctrine which J. M. Whistler was bringing into prominence. Wilde made himself the apostle of this new cult. At Oxford his behaviour procured him a ducking in the Cherwell, and a wrecking of his rooms, but the cult spread among certain sections of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, “too-too” costumes and “aestheticism” generally became a recognized pose. Its affectations were burlesqued in Gilbert and Sullivan’s travesty Patience (1881), which practically killed by ridicule the absurdities to which it had grown. At the same time it cannot be denied that the “aesthetic” movement, in the aspect fundamentally represented by the school of William Morris and Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading “aesthete,” Oscar Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of the day; apart from the ridicule he encountered, his affected paradoxes and his witty sayings were quoted on all sides, and in 1882 he went on a lecturing tour in the United States. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd. He had already published in 1881 a selection of his poems, which, however, only attracted admiration in a limited circle. In 1888 appeared The Happy Prince and Other Tales, illustrated by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood. This charming volume of fairy tales was followed up later by a second collection, The House of Pomegranates (1892), acknowledged by the author to be “intended neither for the British child nor the British public.” In much of his writings, and in his general attitude, there was to most people an undertone of rather nasty suggestion which created prejudice against him, and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), with all its sparkle and cleverness, impressed them more from this point of view than from its purely literary brilliance. Wilde contributed some characteristic articles to the reviews, all coloured by his peculiar attitude towards art and life, and in 1891 republished three of them as a book called Intentions. His first real success with the larger public was as a dramatist with Lady Windermere’s Fan at the St James’s Theatre in 1892, followed by A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The
