Historical voices
1854–1900
Playwright, poet and wit; author of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
A reference author. Valice Press has no connection with Oscar Wilde, their publishers or their estate. Oscar Wilde appears here as part of the reading context around the shelf.
Biography
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin to a literary, Anglo-Irish family, and studied at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford. By the 1880s he was a celebrity in London: a lecturer on art, a poet, a reviewer, and a conspicuous dresser who made a career of being talked about.
In the early 1890s he turned to the stage and wrote four comedies in as many years, while The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel, appeared in 1890 and caused a scandal. In 1895, at the height of his fame, he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel; the case collapsed and he was himself prosecuted and sentenced to two years' hard labour for gross indecency. He left England on his release in 1897 and died in Paris three years later.
Works
Timeline
1888
Published The Happy Prince and Other Tales.
1890
The first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in the July number of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine.
1895
With two of his comedies on stage in London he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel; the case failed and he was arrested and convicted of gross indecency.
1897
Released from prison; he left England and did not return.
1898
Published The Ballad of Reading Gaol under the name C.3.3.
1900
Died in Paris on 30 November.
Why they are here
Wilde's comedies and his one novel made wit a literary method, and his trial made him the most famous English-language casualty of laws against homosexuality. His work, and the story of his life, are a recurring reference point in the history of queer writing, women's as well as men's.
The Importance of Being Earnest remains one of the most performed comedies in English, and The Picture of Dorian Gray is still among the best-known Gothic novels.
Related authors
Sources
Everything on this page about Oscar Wilde is written from these sources, not from memory. Their dates and key claims were checked against the sources on 8 October 2026.The life dates are compared across Wikidata and the Library of Congress’s authority records.
