After writing in different forms throughout the s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats ; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist , first at Trinity College Dublin , then at Magdalen College, Oxford.
He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism , led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals.
Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage.
Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel.
The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered.
