Fisherman

Oscar Wilde

(1854-1900) He is an Irish poet and dramatist. A spokesman for Aestheticism, in the early 1880s he gave a lecture tour in the U.S. and established himself in London circles by his wit and flamboyance. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), cambines gothic of Dorian Gray(1891), combines gothic elements. His callections include "The Happy prince", "The Devoted Friand," and the heartbreakind stery "The Fisherman and His Soul. His macabre play Salome (1893) was later adapted as the libretto of Richard Strauss's opera. His greatest work was the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest (1899), a satire of Victorian social hypocrisy. Two critical dialogues, "The Decay of Lying"and "The Critic as Artist," are admired as agually brilliant. He wrote a recriminatory letter to his lover that was adited and published as De Profundis (1905). After his release, he moved to Paris; his only later work was The Ballad of Reading Gaol(1898), on inhuname prison conditions. He died suddenly of acute meningitis.