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Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and was educated in Dublin and Oxford. His three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and A House of Pomegranates, together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his society comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. Success, however, was short-lived. In 1891 Wilde had met and fallen extravagantly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas, and he was later sentenced to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. He was released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate self-imposed exile on the continent. Wilde died in Paris in ignominy in 1900. Colm Toibin is the author of five novels, including The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, and a collection of stories, Mothers and Sons. His essay collection Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar appeared in 2002. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction.
'De Profundis' remains Wilde's greatest piece of prose-writing -- Colm Tóibín
