About the Author

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, in 1854, to a well-known surgeon and a supporter of Irish independence, who invested a lot of time in Irish and English literature. Wilde attended Magdalene College, Oxford, where he failed at an academic career and began to study literature and the arts. He was married in 1884 to Constance Lloyd, while working as a magazine editor and publishing his own poetry, plays, fairy tales and essays. Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, released in 1890 in Lippincotts Monthly Magazine, which was received by the public as immoral and took much criticism. Wilde later achieved success as a playwright with his plays Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde was arrested in the later 1890's for homosexual offenses after an extramarital affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he met a year after he wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray. When released in 1897, Wilde left for France under the new identity of Sebastian Melmoth. Wilde died after 3 years in Paris, in November in 1900, and is now buried in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise.