Irish-British writer, poet and dramatist who had a great wit and was, at the peak of his career, accused of a homosexual affair. He brought suit for libel against his accuser in 1895, but lost; Wilde spent two years in prison for his “crime.” His father went through a similar ordeal in Dublin in 1864 when he also went on trial for libel. His wife, Constance Lloyd, and two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, moved to Ireland to escape the scandal and Wilde spent the last years of his life as a broken man. He moved to Paris where he lived under an assumed name.
Wilde’s true genius emerged through his talk and journalism, after leaving Oxford, in 1878. Journalism was always Wilde’s first love, so strong that he spent two years editing a women’s magazine called “The Lady’s World.” Wilde, after taking over the magazine, renamed it “The Woman’s World,” and helped to create the everlasting women’s magazine formula of campy frivolity and feminist earnestness. With such a lofty position at this stage in life, it was inevitable that Wilde would eventually have to make his way into society, which he did through radiant humour and top-this wit. In December 1881, without even a lecture written, Wilde set out on an American lecture tour that brought nothing but success to him; his combination of wit and easy material made it very easy for Wilde. Following his American success, Wilde made a lengthy stay in Paris, which, unfortunately, did not bring him as much success as in America. He soon discovered that wit and easy material do not go nearly as far to impress Parisians already so culturally in the know. In 1883, he returned to England. One of his earliest works, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” revolved around this coming-home time period in Wilde’s life. Comedy and wit became part of his life, once again, through four well written comedies beginning in 1891: “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” “A Woman of No Importance,” “An Ideal Husband” and, above all, “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Wilde married his wife, Constance Lloyd, in 1884. Their marriage appeared to be a perfect love match, that is, until after the couple had children. After childbearing, he revealed to Frank Harris that he was revolted by his wife’s body, “When I married, my wife was a beautiful girl, white and slim as a lily….In a year or so all the flowerlike grace had vanished; she became heavy, shapeless, deformed.” It may have been this less-than-ideal view of his wife that caused Wilde, by the end of 1887, to become involved in his first extended “same sex” romance with a man named Robbie Ross. Four years later, in 1891, he met Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas, a gorgeous homosexual son of the Marquis of Queensbury. It was at this time that they began their doomed affair, the affair that would eventually lead to Wilde spending two years of his life in jail.
On 29 October 1900, he was bankrupt and practically bedridden in a Paris hotel room. He had surgery several weeks before for an ear infection and for the first time since the surgery, summoned enough strength to walk to a cafe for a glass of absinthe. He remarked that “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” The next day he complained of severe pain in his ear. An abscess developed which led to acute meningitis, related some say, to syphilis. He suffered for weeks, getting little relief from opium, morphine and champagne. During his final semiconscious moments, his companions saw that he was received into the Catholic Church. He died of encephalitis on 30 November 1900 at around 2pm in Paris, aged 46.
Link to Wikipedia biography