when was the importance of being ernest written
The Importance of Being Earnest After the success of Wilde's plays Lady Windermere's Fan and A Woman of No Importance, Wilde's producers urged him to write further plays. In July 1894 he mooted his idea for The Importance of Being Earnest to George Alexander, the actor-manager of the St James's Theatre. Wilde spent the summer with his family at Worthing, where he wrote the play quickly in August.[1] His fame now at its peak, he used the working title Lady Lancing to avoid pre-emptive speculation of its content.[2] Many names and ideas in the play were borrowed from people or places the author had known; Lady Queensberry, Lord Alfred Douglas's mother, for example, lived at Bracknell.[3][n 1] There is widespread agreement among Wilde scholars that the most important influence on the play was W. S. Gilbert's 1877 farce Engaged;[6] Wilde borrowed from Gilbert not only several incidents but, in Russell Jackson's phrase "the gravity of tone demanded by Gilbert of his actors".[7]