Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and then at Oxford. His first collection of poems was published in 1881. Later, after his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884, he published a series of children's fairy tales. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was published in 1891, but Wilde's first major success came from the theater with "Lady Windermere's Fan" in 1892. This was followed by three more plays: "A Woman of No Importance," "An Ideal Husband," and "The Importance of Being Earnest," while the fourth, "Salome," was banned in England and published in France in 1893. In 1895, he was sentenced to two years of hard labor on charges of homosexuality. From his time in prison emerged two of his masterpieces, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "De Profundis." After his release in 1897, he settled permanently in Paris until his death in 1900.