OSCAR WILDE
Born Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde in Dublin, Oscar Wilde proved to be a brilliant
scholar at Oxford, winning the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna." His first collection, Poems, was published in
1881. After 1890, he had enormous success on stage with his sparkling comedies Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman
of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1985) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Wilde's play Salome
(1893), written in French, was refused a license in London but, 13 years later, was adapted by Richard Strauss into a
successful opera. Translated by Lord Alfred Douglas, it later appeared in England. Douglas's father, the Marquis of
Queensberry, strongly disapproved of Wilde and a quarrel ensued which eventually led to his imprisonment for
homosexuality. Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor and was released in 1897. He moved to France under the name
Sebastian Melmoth. While there, he wrote his famous poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." He died in exile in 1900.
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