In 1854 Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin to affluent parents. His father was a prominent surgeon and archaeologist; his mother was a witty poet, Irish nationalist, and feminist.

Wilde excelled at the Portola Royal school and then at Trinity College, where he took the Gold Medal for Greek. In 1878 he won a scholarship to Magdalen College at Oxford.

Wilde attracted a crowd of admirers for his witty, intellectual lectures and his outrageous cult of "aestheticism." He believed in art-for-art's-sake, a philosophy he had learned from his association with John Ruskin, an art critic and Oxford don.

A very successful lecture tour of America in the early 1880s on "The Principles of Aestheticism" earned him much-needed income as well as an international reputation.

His marriage to Constance Mary Lloyd in 1884 produced two children; it was during this time he wrote his best works: The Picture of Dorian...