Wilde

Oscar Wilde's personal style has often obscured his substance. A brilliant conversationalist and a provocative literary critic, he also wrote eloquent intelligent novels, plays and children's stories. He cultivated friendships among the artistic elite, attracting attention for his manner of dress and contempt for middle-class values. Ultimately he fell victim to his own flamboyance and a characteristically English fit of morality, spending two years at hard labor from which he never fully recovered.