Oscar Wilde

London learned his epigrams before it learned what to do with the man who wrote them. Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, studied at Trinity College and Oxford, and made himself a public emblem of the Aesthetic movement. He lectured, edited The Woman’s World, wrote criticism, fairy tales, poetry, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then came the society comedies: Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1895 he was convicted under laws against homosexual acts and sentenced to two years of hard labour. Prison produced De Profundis; afterward came The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He died in Paris in 1900. The wit survived the drawing room. So did the cost of making it dangerous.