← All authors
Oscar Wilde
1 book in the library
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet and critic, and the most quoted wit of his century. His comedies made fun of the respectable London society that filled their theatres, and his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was attacked as immoral on publication and then used against him in court. In 1895, at the height of his success with The Importance of Being Earnest, he was convicted of "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years' hard labour; the imprisonment produced De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol and ruined his health. He died in Paris three years after his release, aged forty-six.