Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet, critic and dramatist, and the most quoted wit of late-Victorian London. He wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), before the run of society comedies that culminated in The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1895 he was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour; he died in Paris three years after his release, aged forty-six.