Oscar Fingal O'Flaghertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, the son of a doctor and the Irish Nationalist poet "Speranza," who early in his life made clear her high expectations for him. He went to Trinity College, where he took a strong interest in Greek literature, and then on scholarship to Oxford, where he was known as an aesthete and disciple of Pater. He won a prestigious prize for poetry composition in 1878, the year he graduated.
He published his first volume of poems in 1881, and from 1882 began giving
lecture tours, less on the strength of his reputation as a writer than as
the witty proponent of aestheticism and "art for art's sake." Over
the next decade and a half he published more poetry, fairy tales for
children (The Happy Prince and other tales), plays (including The
Importance of Being Earnest), a novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray),
and was for a short time editor of a periodical, Woman's World.
His homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas brought him to
grief when Douglas' father publicly insulted him, precipitating a legal
battle which in 1895 resulted in Wilde's imprisonment for two years
with hard labour for homosexual offenses. His imprisonment in Reading
Gaol (pronounced "redding jail") broke his health; following release he went
into exile in France and wrote little before his death.