“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius," wrote Oscar Wilde. This epigram was typical of his ability to conjure words like a magician. His stage plays, writings, lectures and witty comments both entertained and upset late 19th-century London: he was a celebrated author, yet his personal lifestyle was widely condemned.

Wilde was larger than life. A tall man, he wore his hair long, extravagant clothes and a flower in his buttonhole. He loved celebrity and self-publicity, but his unusual views and almost open homosexuality challenged the conventions of Victorian society. In the end, the public proved less tolerant and forgiving of Wilde's behaviour than he might have hoped.

"I have nothing to declare except my genius"

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. He had a brother, Willie, who was two years older, and a younger sister, Isola, who died before reaching her tenth birthday. Oscar's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals: his father was a successful eye and ear surgeon; his mother a poet, linguist and Irish revolutionary.

Wilde was a brilliant student, fluent in French and German. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, before moving on to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study classics. At Oxford, he became involved in the Aesthetic Movement that believed in "art for art's sake" and the pursuit of beauty, sensuality, creativity and self-expression. Aesthetics, in life and art, became central to Wilde's thinking.

After leaving Oxford, he settled in London and began his literary career with the publication of Poems, in 1881. Reviews were mixed, but the main criticism was that Wilde's poetry was unoriginal. Nevertheless, he continued to write and edit while enjoying a parallel career as a socialite, popular dinner guest and speaker.

"Everything in moderation, including moderation"

Wilde spent most of 1882 on a busy lecture tour of America and Canada, speaking on the English Renaissance, interior design and the arts. He met some of the leading American scholars and literary figures of the time, and declared: "I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious."

On his return from America, Wilde continued lecturing in England and Ireland. In May 1884, he married Constance Lloyd in London. An Anglo-Irish author, she was intelligent and independent. The couple had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.

Perhaps inspired by his children, Wilde wrote a series of fairy tales, including "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose" and "The Selfish Giant". He frequently told the tales at dinner parties, and they were published to positive reviews as The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891).

Wilde also wrote for The Pall Mall Gazette and edited The Woman's World magazine. He brought a greater focus to how women lived their lives, with literature and social features rather than just fashion. However, Wilde became tired of this role as his celebrity grew with every dinner and social gathering. The biographer Frances Winwar describes how Wilde "would do nothing in moderation - except work. But then his real work was accomplished when he talked."

"I can resist everything except temptation"

Wilde did, however, commit time and energy to his next writing project: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Published in 1891, this Gothic novel is about a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, who becomes obsessed with his perfect portrait and sells his soul in return for eternal youth.

One of the main characters in the novel, Lord Henry Wotton, teaches Dorian how to follow his feelings and desires without holding back: "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." While Dorian remains young, every act of wrongdoing he commits makes his portrait grow older and more sinister. It's a cautionary tale about moral corruption and the risks of living an aesthetic life without limits.

Victorian society was scandalized by the book, in particular, by its decadence and homoeroticism. Reviewers described the novel as "unclean" and "poisonous", but Wilde said, "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."

He now set his sights on the London theatre, writing a string of popular stage comedies, including Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895). There was a dark centre to Wilde's humour. As one character in his most successful play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), says, the truth is "rarely pure and never simple".

Theatre presented the perfect medium for Wilde's wit and for satirizing society. Despite being shown their own failings and pretensions on stage, the Victorian public delighted in Wilde's sparkling plots, which featured mistaken identities, sexual indiscretions and social snobbery. Wilde had found fame and he set out to live life to the full. "To live is the rarest thing in the world," he wrote. "Most people exist, that is all."

"True friends stab you in the front"

Sadly, he was soon to become the architect of his own downfall. In Victorian Britain, same-sex relationships were illegal. Wilde's homosexual affairs were an open secret, as was his relationship with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, son of the eighth Marquess of Queensberry. Attempting to stop the relationship, the marquess accused Wilde of being a "posing somdomite" (actual spelling). Against the advice of his friends, Wilde sued Queensberry for libel.

He lost the action, so he had to pay the legal costs and faced bankruptcy. Worse still, because his sexual behaviour was revealed during the trial, he was arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison with hard labour. Conditions were brutal and Wilde's health declined. He was eventually transferred to Reading Gaol, 50 kilometres west of London. Crowds came to insult and laugh at him.

In prison, Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to "Bosie" Douglas, published after his death under the title De Profundis. In the document, Wilde is thoughtful and self-critical, but he repeats the central principles of his life and work: imagination, individualism, self-expression and self-development. "To regret one's own experience is to arrest one's own development," he wrote. "To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."

"I don't want to go to heaven"

Wilde was released from prison on 19 May 1897 and immediately went to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. He was in poor health, and his reputation was ruined. Constance had fled with their children to Switzerland to escape the scandal. She died in 1898 after a failed operation. That same year, Wilde published The Ballad of Reading Gaol under the name "C.3.3.", his prison cell number. It's a powerful and moving story of a man condemned to death for murdering his young wife.

For the next two years, Wilde travelled through Europe under the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. Although he had written, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about," he now kept a low profile. The ear infection he had suffered while in prison became worse and he caught meningitis. He died, aged 46, in a Paris hotel, on 30 November 1900, and was buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery. "I don't want to go to heaven," he once joked. "None of my friends are there."