Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854; his father was a famous eye and ear surgeon and his mother a poet. He studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduated with brilliant distinction, and became the leading figure of the Aesthetic movement, proclaiming 'art for art's sake'. Flamboyantly dressed and dazzlingly witty, he is said to have told a customs officer on arriving to lecture in America, 'I have nothing to declare except my genius.' His comedies, among them The Importance of Being Earnest, took London by storm. But at the height of his fame he was convicted of 'gross indecency' for his homosexuality and sentenced to two years' hard labour. Ruined, he lived after his release under an assumed name in France, poor and ill, and died at forty-six in a cheap Paris hotel.