
Oscar Wilde
(1854 - 1900)
Oscar Wilde welcomed the satirical portrait of himself in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience—“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”—and the play’s producer arranged an American lecture tour for him in 1882: “Nothing, except my genius,” he is said to have replied when asked if he had anything to declare at customs. He published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1891. Convicted of charges of gross indecency in 1895, Wilde was sentenced to two years of servitude with hard labor.