Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde
Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony
Born	Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-10-16)16 October 1854 Dublin, Ireland
Died	30 November 1900(1900-11-30) (aged 46) Paris, France
Occupation	Author, poet, playwright
Language	English, French
Nationality	Irish
Education	Portora Royal School
Alma mater	Trinity College, Dublin Magdalen College, Oxford
Period	Victorian era
Genre	Drama, short story, criticism, dialogue, journalism
Literary movement	Aestheticism
Notable works	The Importance of Being Earnest The Picture of Dorian Gray
Spouse	Constance Lloyd (m. 1884; d. 1898)
Children	Cyril Holland, Vyvyan Holland
Relatives	William Wilde (father) Jane Wilde (mother) Willie Wilde (brother)
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Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish, Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.

As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.

At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still being performed in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour.