Wilde, Oscar (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills) (1854–1900)

Irish writer. With his flamboyant style and quotable conversation, he dazzled London society and, on his lecture tour in 1882, the USA. He published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891, followed by a series of sharp dramatic comedies, including A Woman of No Importance (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

Wilde was born in Dublin and studied at Dublin and Oxford, where he became known as a supporter of the Aesthetic Movement (‘art for art's sake’). He published Poems (1881), and also wrote fairy tales and other stories, criticism, and a long, anarchic political essay ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’ (1891). His elegant social comedies also include Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and An Ideal Husband (1895). The drama Salomé (1893), based on the biblical character, was written in French; considered scandalous by the British censor, it was first performed in Paris in 1896 with the actor Sarah Bernhardt in the title role.

In 1895 he was imprisoned for two years for homosexual offences. Among his lovers was Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father provoked Wilde into a lawsuit that led to his social and financial ruin and imprisonment. The long poem Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) and a letter published as De Profundis (1905) were written in jail, and explain his side of the relationship. After his release from prison in 1897, he lived in France and died in exile there, converting to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris.