Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and one of the most popular playwrights in London. Wilde is best known for his famous novel called The Picture of Dorian Gray, first published in 1890. His parents were Anglo Irish intellectuals, and he was a great classicist at Trinity College Dublin and then at Oxford.
As he began to gain more and more fame and success, Wilde decided to sue the Marquis de Queensberry for criminal libel, but the Marquis was, in fact, the father of Wilde’s partner, Lord Alfred Douglas, and brought even more serious charges against Wilde, forcing the poet to withdraw his initial complaint.
However, after these accusations, Wilde was still arrested for gross indecency with men and was imprisoned between 1895-1897. When he was released, he decided to move to France.
In addition, Wilde is another cultural icon who died poor a few years after leaving prison. His cause of death was meningitis.
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