Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright who lived in the Victorian Era, a time of great wealth inequality. He was widely known as a society wit and as an advocate of the Aesthetic Movement, which advocated "art for the sake of the art." The Happy Prince and Other Tales and its follow-up, the fairy-tale collection A House of Pomegranates are part of his early work, written after the birth of his two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. Wilde's best-known work for adults (Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Picture of Dorian Gray ) was published during the last decade of his life.

After losing a libel case against the marquess of Queensberry, who had accused him of being a "sodomite," Wilde had to serve two years of prison with hard labor, after which he moved to France. He died penniless in Paris, of meningitis, on November 30, 1900.