Oscar Wilde was without question the central literary figure of the fin de siecle, and, in his own words, ‘a man who stood in symbolic relation to his times’.
Celebrated first as a poet and writer of brilliant essays and charming fables, he was also a perceptive critic and an incisive moral and political thinker.
Today, however, his fame rests mainly on his novel of artistic decadence, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, and the ever-popular ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.
From his first notoriety in the 1880s wh…
