Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an
Irish playwright,
novelist,
poet, and
short story writer. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late
Victorian London, and one of the greatest
celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of
hard labour after being convicted of the offence of "gross indecency". The lawyer
H. Montgomery Hyde suggests this term implies
homosexual acts not amounting to
buggery in British legislation of the time. Wilde was born into an
Anglo-Irish family, at 21 Westland Row,
Dublin, to Sir
William Wilde and his wife
Jane Francesca Elgee. Jane was a successful writer and an Irish
nationalist, known also as 'Speranza', while Sir William was Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon, and wrote books on
archaeology and
folklore. He was a renowned philanthropist, and his dispensary for the care of the city's poor, in Lincoln Place at the rear of
Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
