A series of trials that pitted Wilde against Lord Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, exposed Wilde’s homosexuality, causing him to be charged and sentenced for “gross indecency.” After serving two years in prison, Wilde retired to the European continent, where he wrote occasionally under an assumed name, briefly rekindled his romance with Lord Alfred, and converted to Catholicism. But Wilde’s success was short-lived as he became embroiled in scandal. Wilde’s career as a playwright flourished in the coming years as he wrote a number of successful plays for the Paris and London stages including Lady Windemere’s Fan, Salomé, An Ideal Husband, and finally The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. Wilde met his lover Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford, in 1891. In the years following the couple had two sons, while Wilde published his serialized novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and made his way as writer and editor in London’s publishing scene. Wilde married Dublin heiress Constance Lloyd in 1884. Though a fledgling writer, Wilde’s fame as a proponent of Aestheticism grew during his yearlong lecture tour of the United States, England, and Ireland. Moving from Oxford to London upon graduation, Wilde then published his first volume of poems to some critical acclaim. At Oxford, Wilde came under the influence of tutor Walter Pater’s Aesthetic philosophy-“art for arts sake”-and developed a reputation as an eccentric, flamboyant, and foppish young man.

An exceptionally gifted student, Wilde studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford, on scholarship. Oscar Wilde led a cosmopolitan lifestyle as a writer, playwright, journalist, intellectual, and aesthete.

Wilde the importance of being earnest