Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900). Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde wrote some of the finest comedies in the English language, including Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He was also known for his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Wilde was a great conversationalist and a man of wide learning, but his life ended in disgrace and poverty. EARLY LIFE Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Iraland. His father was Ireland’s leading ear and eye surgeon, who also published books on archaeology, folklore, and the satirist Jonathan Swift. His mother, who wrote under the name Speranza, was a poet and an authority on Celtic myth and folklore. Wilde attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ireland (now Northern Ireland), from 1864 to 1871. He then received a series of scholarships for college. He attended Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, from 1871 to 1874 and then Magdalen College at the University of Oxford