“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”
– Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. He is best remembered for his epigrams, plays Salome (1891) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) as well as his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He is also know for criminal conviction for gross indecency in what The Independent dubbed “one of the first celebrity trials.” This came about because he was a gay man who lived during a time when homosexual acts were considered sexual offences. The trial led to a two year jail sentence that he served from 1895 to 1897.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems and lectured in various parts of North America on the new “English Renaissance in Art.” He then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress sense and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays and used them as inspiration for … Dorian Gray. The book was his only novel and was lauded for its themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty.
He wrote Salome (1891) in French while in Paris. However, a licence for England-based performances was refused. This was due to a prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.”