Irish writer who, on the opening night of "The Importance of Being Earnest" in 1895, was the toast of London with two plays on the West End. He was openly in thrall to Lord Alfred Douglas, a young aristocrat, whose father left a misspelled card at Wilde's club calling him a "somdomite". Wilde sued for libel, but withdrew when the defence threatened to call male prostitutes as witnesses. He was then arrested, tried for "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years' hard labour. After his release in 1897 his wife, Constance, took their sons abroad and changed their name to Holland. He travelled to France and never saw his boys again, dying penniless in Paris at 46 in 1900.
He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery; admirers wore down the genitals of the winged figure on his tomb until vandals knocked off the testicles in 1961. A glass panel was installed in 2011 to deter lipstick kisses.
A long-standing claim that Wilde died of syphilis—first published in 1912 and repeated by Richard Ellmann in 1987—has been disputed by doctors who reviewed his records and argue he died of cerebral meningitis following an ear injury sustained in prison. His grandson Merlin Holland, the literary executor of the estate, has spent 40 years documenting fabrications and forgeries about Wilde, including a forger active in the 1920s whose work resurfaced at a San Francisco auction in 2007.
The Wright Bothers weren't the first to fly. They were just the first not to crash.