Information about the Author
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He attended Trinity College in Dublin and later Magdalen College in Oxford, where he began to promote the new aesthetic movement (or art for art's sake). Despite winning a first prize and the Newdigate Prize for poetry, Wilde was unable to secure a scholarship at Oxford and was forced to earn a living through lectures and writing for magazines. After marrying Constance Lloyd in 1884, he attempted to establish himself as a writer but initially had little success. His three volumes of short stories, The Happy Prince (1888), The Canterville Ghost (1891), and A House Full of Pomegranates (1891), along with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually earned him a reputation as a modern writer with original talent, a reputation that was confirmed and enhanced by phenomenal success.