After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.Īt 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. He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.Īt 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 what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). 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 interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. At university, Wilde read Greats he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life.

Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin.

Oscar wilde