Claim: Oscar Wilde was one of London's most popular playwrights.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde -LRB- 16 October 185430 November 1900 -RRB- was an Irish playwright , novelist , essayist , and poet . After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s , he became one of London 's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s . He is remembered for his epigrams , his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , his plays , as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death .   Wilde 's parents were successful Anglo-Irish , Dublin intellectuals . Their son became fluent in French and German early in life . At university , Wilde read Greats ; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist , first at Dublin , then at Oxford . He became known for his involvement in the rising 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 .   As a spokesman for aestheticism , he tried his hand at various literary activities : he published a book of poems , lectured in the United States and Canada on the new `` English Renaissance in Art '' , and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist . Known for his biting wit , flamboyant dress and glittering conversation , Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day .   At the turn of the 1890s , 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 his only novel , The Picture of Dorian Gray -LRB- 1890 -RRB- . The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely , and combine them with larger social themes , drew Wilde to write drama . He wrote Salome -LRB- 1891 -RRB- in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage . Unperturbed , Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s , which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London .   At the height of his fame and success , while The Importance of Being Earnest -LRB- 1895 -RRB- , was still being performed in London , Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel . The Marquess was the father of Wilde 's lover , Lord Alfred Douglas . The libel trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men . After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years ' hard labour , the maximum penalty .   In 1897 , in prison , he wrote De Profundis , which was published in 1905 , a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials , forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure . Upon his release he left immediately for France , never to return to Ireland or Britain . There he wrote his last work , The Ballad of Reading Gaol -LRB- 1898 -RRB- , a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life . He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46 .