China and the West

Oscar Wilde was 1871 in Trinity College Dublin and tutored by J.P. Mahaffy. He travelled with Mahaffy to Italy in 1875 and Greece in 1877, and was considerably influences by his former tutor's aesthetic perception. The contention of Mahaffy about Chinese civilization is shown in Twelve lectures on primitive civilization and their physical conditions, in which Mahaffy discusses the development of various civilisations in world history. [Siehe Mahaffy].
As an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, Wilde had his considerable collection of blue-and-white porcelain housed on the shelves. His remark "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china" brought him fame in the university. Wilde's enthusiasm for blue-and-white was a confirmation of his identity as an aesthete.