Oscar Wilde
1854–1900
📌 Pin it
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and wit who became the most talked-about figure in 1890s London. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), scandalized readers with its portrait of decadent youth; his plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), remain the funniest comedies in English.
At the height of his fame, Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel after being accused of homosexuality — and lost. He was then prosecuted for "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years' hard labor, a punishment that broke his health.
He died in Paris in 1900, aged 46, and is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery beneath a famous winged sphinx tomb. His trials remain the starkest symbol of how the Victorian establishment policed private life.
More in Literature & Authors
All →
Charles Dickens
The Victorian era's defining novelist — and its fiercest chronicler of poverty and injustice.
The Brontës
Three sisters from a Yorkshire parsonage who wrote two of the most passionate novels ever published.
Arthur Conan Doyle
The doctor who created Sherlock Holmes — and then tried to kill him off.