Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish poet, playwright, and novelist whose wit and satire became closely associated with the aesthetic movement. The Picture of Dorian Gray turns the pursuit of beauty into a dark inquiry about conscience, influence, and consequence. The Importance of Being Earnest exposes social performance through verbal precision and comic reversals, while The Canterville Ghost lets supernatural comedy unsettle assumptions about tradition and modernity. Readers interested in his fairy-tale voice may choose The Happy Prince and Other Tales, where elegance meets poverty, compassion, and sacrifice. De Profundis offers a more intimate and reflective register than the comedies. Moving among drama, fiction, tales, and prose, Wilde repeatedly tests the distance between a polished public role and the desires or fears it conceals.