TheOscarauthor Wilde Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16th, 1854. His parents were middleclass people, his father a well-known eye and ear doctor, his mother an eccentric and ambitious literary woman. At the age of twenty Wilde went to Oxford University where he spent four happy years and distinguished himself as a brilliant talker, as a scholar1 and for his eccentricity. Two of his teachers at Oxford influenced his future life and work very deeply: John Ruskin and Walter Pater. Wilde liked Ruskin s prose style and passion for beauty and was influenced by Pater s conception of art. He wrote poems and when he left Oxford he was well-known as an aesthete2 and a poet. In 1878 he also won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd and had two children, but their marriage was unhappy, also because of money problems. In London Wilde became famous for his eccentric way of dressing and was often invited to social occasions for his witty3 conversations. In 1888 he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales written for his children. In 1891 he published his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray followed by a collection of short stories, Lord Arthur Savile s Crime and Other Stories. In 1892 he wrote the play Salomé in French; it was rejected in Great Britain because it was considered scandalous. Wilde became successful with the so-called society-plays : Lady Windermere s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), the most famous among his comedies, which revolves around the adventures of two young men from the London upper-class. It is a satire on Victorian hypocrisy, full of witty sayings and puns4. In 1895 Oscar Wilde was accused of homosexual relations with Lord Alfred Douglas by the Marquis of Queensberry (Alfred s father). Wilde was arrested, tried5 and sentenced6 to two years imprisonment with hard labour7 at Reading Gaol. After being released8 from prison he changed his name to Sebastian Melmoth, wrote the long poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) about his prison experience and spent the last years of his life in bad health and financial conditions. In 1900 he died in Paris. 1. scholar: person who knows and studies a lot about a particolar subject. 2. aesthete: person who cares about beauty. 3. witty: clever and funny. 4. pun: a joke using words that have two meanings. 5. try: to judge a person or case in a court of law. 6. sentence: punish in a court of law. 7. hard labour: very hard physical work as a form of punishment. 8. release: let someone leave, free someone.