Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish novelist, poet, and writer of short stories and plays. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and then at Oxford and was one of the most successful and fashionable writers of the nineteenth century, preaching the importance of style and broad-mindedness.
Oscar was a brilliant and flamboyant character, but he suffered a terrible downfall after failing in a libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his close friend and supposed lover Lord Alfred Douglas, or 'Bosie'. Queensberry had called Wilde a 'Somdomist', and as a
… More result of what came out in the ensuing libel action Oscar was advised to flee the country. He refused to do so, was arrested and later found guilty in a famous trial for "gross indecency" (that is, homosexual acts). He served two years' hard labour in Reading Gaol and came out a broken man.
Shunned by his wife and children (whose name was changed from Wilde to Holland), Oscar went to Paris under the name of Sebastian Melmoth and died there in poverty of meningitis at the age of forty-six.
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