Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, the son of Sir William Wilde, an eye and ear surgeon, and Jane Wilde, a poet who wrote under the name Speranza. He studied classics at Trinity College Dublin and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1878. Moving to London, he became a leader of the Aesthetic movement, which held that art should be valued for its own sake, and in 1882 he gave a year-long lecture tour of the United States and Canada. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and they had two sons, for whom he wrote fairy tales such as The Happy Prince. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), tells of a young man who stays youthful while his portrait ages. His comedies, including Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were great successes. In 1895 he was convicted of 'gross indecency' under the laws of the time and sentenced to two years of hard labor. After his release he lived in France, and he died in Paris in 1900.

Oscar Wilde is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Wrote for Catholic periodicals as a young man and received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Source: Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)