Oscar Wilde: The Life Story Behind the Witty Playwright
In this post
Oscar Wilde could make a whole room laugh with a single sentence, and he could make a whole room think with the sentence that followed it. He was, in the London of the 1890s, the most famous talker alive, a man whose conversation was itself a form of art, whose plays were full of lines that people still quote today, and whose novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is still read, still argued about, and still shocking, more than a hundred years after it was written. He believed that art should be beautiful, that life should be lived beautifully, and that wit was not a decoration but a way of seeing the truth.
He was born in Dublin, he was educated at Oxford, he married, he had two sons, he became the most successful playwright in London, and then, in a few short months in 1895, he lost everything. He was tried, he was convicted, he was sent to prison for two years of hard labour, and he died, five years later, in exile in Paris, at the age of forty-six, poor, ill and largely forgotten. It is one of the most dramatic falls in literary history, and it is also one of the most unjust, because Wilde was punished, in effect, for being who he was, for loving whom he loved, in a time when the law made that love a crime.
This is the story of a man who was brilliant, funny, generous and flawed, who wrote some of the wittiest plays in English, who believed in beauty, and who paid, terribly, for living by his beliefs. It is also the story of how his work survived him, how his plays returned to the stage, how his novel was read again, and how a man who died in disgrace became, a century later, one of the most loved writers in the English language.
Dublin, a Brilliant Mother and a Famous Father
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, the second son of Sir William Wilde, a famous eye and ear surgeon, and Jane Wilde, a poet and writer who was known as Speranza, and who was a passionate supporter of Irish independence. The house in Merrion Square was full of books, full of talk, full of visitors who were writers, doctors, politicians and artists, and Oscar grew up listening to conversations about literature, about Ireland, about politics, and about the importance of being clever, of being witty, of being able to hold a room with words.
His mother was, in many ways, the most important influence on his early life. She was a large, dramatic, talented woman who wrote poetry, who hosted salons, who believed in Ireland, and who encouraged her children to be brilliant, to be bold, to be themselves. His father was a successful, respected man, who was also, by many accounts, a difficult man, who had affairs, who was sued, and who died when Oscar was twenty-one. Oscar loved both his parents, and he learned from both of them: from his mother, the love of language, of drama, of Ireland; from his father, the love of learning, of medicine, of the world.
He was a clever boy, and he was sent to school at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, and then to Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied classics, where he won prizes, where he read widely, and where he began to develop the style that would make him famous: a style based on paradox, on wit, on turning an idea upside down to see what was underneath it. He was, by then, a young man who was already known for his talk, for his clothes, for his love of beauty, and for his belief that art mattered more than anything else.
In 1874, he went to Oxford, to Magdalen College, where he studied for four years, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry, where he was influenced by the art critic Walter Pater and by the artist and writer John Ruskin, and where he developed his philosophy of aestheticism, the belief that art should be made for its own sake, for beauty, not for a moral lesson, not for usefulness, not for anything except itself. It was a philosophy that would shape his work, and that would, in time, be used against him, because a man who believes that beauty matters more than morality is, in the eyes of many people, a dangerous man.
He left Oxford in 1878, and he went to London, where he began to make a name for himself as a poet, as a lecturer, as a talker, as a man who dressed differently, who wore a green carnation in his buttonhole, who carried a sunflower, who believed that a person should be a work of art. It was, in many ways, a performance, and Wilde knew it was a performance, but it was also, in a deeper sense, who he was: a man who believed that life should be lived beautifully, and who was willing to be laughed at, and to laugh at himself, in order to live that way.
Oxford, Aestheticism and the Young Man in London
At Oxford, Wilde became a leading figure in the aesthetic movement, a group of young men who believed in art for art’s sake, who wore their hair long, who decorated their rooms with peacock feathers and blue china, who read Pater and Ruskin, and who talked, late into the night, about beauty, about poetry, about the ancient Greeks, and about the future of art. He was, by all accounts, a brilliant student, a brilliant talker, and a young man who was already, in his early twenties, famous in Oxford, and beginning to be known in London.
He won the Newdigate Prize in 1878 for a poem called Ravenna, and he left Oxford with a double first, a rare achievement, and with a reputation as a wit, as a dandy, as a man who was going to be famous, though nobody quite knew for what. He went to London, he published a book of poems in 1881, he lectured in America in 1882, travelling across the United States and Canada, talking about art, about beauty, about the need for a beautiful life, and he was, in America, both admired and mocked, a tall, elegant Irishman in a velvet coat, talking about art to audiences who had never heard anything like it.
He returned to London, he married Constance Lloyd in 1884, a beautiful, intelligent, kind woman from a wealthy family, and they had two sons, Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, born in 1886. For a few years, Wilde was a family man, a husband, a father, a writer who edited a magazine, The Woman’s World, who wrote fairy tales for his children, who lived in a comfortable house in Chelsea, and who seemed, to the outside world, to be a respectable, successful, happy man. It was, in many ways, the happiest period of his life, and it was also, in many ways, a period of hiding, because Wilde, who was, by then, aware of his attraction to men, was living a double life, a life that would, in time, destroy him.
He wrote, in those years, stories, essays, poems, and plays, and he began to develop the voice that would make him famous: a voice that was witty, paradoxical, elegant, and that could, in a single sentence, turn a common idea upside down. He wrote The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888, a book of fairy tales for children that are, in fact, sad, beautiful stories about love, about sacrifice, about a prince who gives away his gold to help the poor, and about a swallow who dies for love. The stories are still read today, and they show a side of Wilde that is often missed: a tender, generous, moral side, a side that believed in kindness, even when the world did not.
The Picture of Dorian Gray and a Novel That Shocked London
In 1890, Wilde published his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, first in a magazine and then, in 1891, as a book. It tells the story of Dorian Gray, a beautiful young man who has his portrait painted by an artist, Basil Hallward, and who, under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, a witty, cynical aristocrat, wishes that the portrait would grow old instead of him, so that he could remain young and beautiful forever, no matter what he did. The wish comes true, in a strange, terrible way: Dorian stays young, while the portrait, hidden in an attic, grows old, ugly and corrupt, showing, in its face, the sins that Dorian commits in his life, the cruelties, the betrayals, the murders, until, in the end, Dorian, in a fit of horror, stabs the portrait, and is found dead, old and ugly, while the portrait is young and beautiful again.
The novel shocked London. It was called immoral, it was called unhealthy, it was called a book that should not have been written, and Wilde, who had written a preface defending art for art’s sake, was attacked in the press, in the pulpit, and in private. He defended the book, he argued that a book is not moral or immoral, that it is well written or badly written, and that the artist’s job is to make beauty, not to teach a lesson. It was a brave defence, and it was, in many ways, a true one, but it also made him enemies, and those enemies would, a few years later, use the novel against him in court, quoting passages from it as if they were evidence of his life, rather than evidence of his imagination.
Dorian Gray is now recognised as a classic, a novel about beauty, about youth, about the fear of ageing, about the price of a life lived only for pleasure, and about the way a person can hide his true self behind a beautiful face. It is also, in a way, a novel about Wilde himself, about a man who was beautiful, who was witty, who was loved, and who was, underneath, afraid of growing old, afraid of being found out, afraid of the portrait in the attic that showed who he really was. That fear, that doubling, is the heart of the novel, and it is why the book still feels modern, still feels true, still feels like it is about us, even when we are not beautiful, even when we are not young, even when we have never wished for a portrait to grow old in our place.
Wilde also wrote, in the early 1890s, a play called Salome, in French, about the biblical princess who dances for Herod and asks for the head of John the Baptist, a play that was banned in London because it showed biblical characters on stage, and that was later performed in Paris, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, and that became, in time, a famous, strange, beautiful work, a play about desire, about power, about a woman who wants what she cannot have, and who, in the end, is killed for wanting it. It was not a success in Wilde’s lifetime, but it is now recognised as one of his most daring works.
The Great Plays and the Height of Fame
Between 1892 and 1895, Wilde wrote four plays that made him the most successful playwright in London, and that are still performed today, all over the world. Lady Windermere’s Fan, in 1892, A Woman of No Importance, in 1893, An Ideal Husband, in 1895, and The Importance of Being Earnest, in 1895, are all comedies of manners, plays about the upper classes in London, about husbands and wives, about secrets, about double lives, about the gap between what people say and what they do, and they are all full of lines that are still quoted: that the truth is rarely pure and never simple, that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness, that a handbag is not a proper place for a baby, and many others that audiences still laugh at, still remember, and still repeat.
The Importance of Being Earnest, his last and greatest play, is a farce about two young men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who both invent a fictional brother named Ernest in order to escape their duties, who both fall in love with women who want to marry a man named Ernest, and who, in the end, discover that Jack really is Ernest, that his real name is Ernest, and that he can, at last, be earnest in the truest sense. It is a perfect comedy, a play that is, on the surface, silly, and underneath, serious, a play about identity, about names, about the lies we tell to be free, and about the truth that, in the end, sets us free. It opened in London on 14 February 1895, it was a great success, and it is still, today, one of the most performed plays in the English language.
Wilde was, in early 1895, at the height of his fame. He was rich, he was admired, he was the talk of London, he had a wife, two sons, a house in Chelsea, plays running in the West End, and a life that seemed, from the outside, perfect. It was not perfect, and it would not last. He was, by then, in a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, a young, beautiful, reckless aristocrat, known as Bosie, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry, a man who was violent, unstable, and determined to destroy Wilde. Bosie’s father, Queensberry, left a card for Wilde at his club, accusing him, in writing, of being a sodomite, a word that, in Victorian England, was a criminal accusation, and Wilde, encouraged by Bosie, sued Queensberry for libel, a decision that would prove to be one of the worst mistakes of his life.
The libel trial, in the spring of 1895, turned into a trial of Wilde himself. Queensberry’s lawyers, instead of defending the libel, attacked Wilde, quoting from Dorian Gray, from his letters to Bosie, from his poems, and asking him, in court, about his relationships with young men, about his life, about his art, and Wilde, who was a brilliant talker, who could answer any question with wit, found, for the first time in his life, that wit was not enough, that the court was not a salon, that the law was not a game, and that he was, in the end, trapped by his own cleverness, by his own honesty, and by his own refusal to lie about who he was.
The Trials, Prison and the Fall
Wilde lost the libel case, and Queensberry was acquitted, and Wilde was then arrested, tried for gross indecency under the law of the time, and convicted. He was sentenced to two years of hard labour, the maximum sentence, and he was sent to prison, first to Pentonville, then to Wandsworth, then to Reading Gaol, where he spent most of his sentence. It was a terrible punishment, for a man who had lived a life of comfort, of beauty, of talk, to be put in a cell, to be made to pick oakum, to be made to walk on a treadmill, to be silenced, to be humiliated, to be treated as a criminal, and to be, in the eyes of the world, disgraced.
His wife, Constance, who had loved him, who had believed in him, was forced to change her name, to take her sons to Switzerland, to live in exile, and she died, in 1898, at the age of thirty-nine, while Wilde was still in prison, or shortly after his release, a loss that Wilde felt deeply, and that he never fully recovered from. His sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, were taken from him, they were not allowed to see him, and they grew up without their father, a fact that haunted Wilde for the rest of his short life. His friends, many of whom had admired him, abandoned him, his plays were closed, his books were withdrawn, his name was removed from theatre posters, and he became, in the eyes of London, a non-person, a man who had been famous and was now infamous.
In prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, a long letter to Bosie, in which he tried to understand what had happened to him, in which he wrote about his life, about his mistakes, about his love for Bosie, about his anger at Bosie, about his belief that suffering could be a kind of education, and about his hope that he could, after prison, live a different life, a life that was simpler, humbler, and more honest. De Profundis was not published in his lifetime, in full, and it was only published, in an edited form, in 1905, and in full much later, but it is now recognised as one of his greatest works, a work of prose that is, in many ways, more moving than his plays, because it is not witty in the usual sense, but sad, serious, and true.
He also wrote, in prison, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a poem about a fellow prisoner, a man who had been hanged for murdering his wife, and about the way prison dehumanises men, about the way the law kills, not only the body, but the soul. The poem was published in 1898, after his release, under the name C.3.3., his prison number, and it was a success, and it showed that Wilde, even after prison, could still write, could still move readers, could still find beauty in a terrible place. It is a powerful, haunting poem, and it is, in many ways, his farewell to the world he had known, a world that had punished him for being himself.
Paris, Exile and the Last Years
Wilde was released from prison in May 1897, after two years of hard labour, and he left England immediately, never to return. He went to France, to Paris, where he lived, under the name Sebastian Melmoth, a name taken from a gothic novel, in poverty, in exile, in ill health, and in a kind of quiet despair. He was, by then, a broken man, physically and emotionally, his health had been ruined by prison, his teeth were bad, his ear was infected, he was deaf in one ear, he was poor, he depended on friends for money, and he was, for the most part, forgotten by the London that had once adored him.
He did meet Bosie again, briefly, in Naples, and they lived together for a time, but the relationship, which had already caused so much pain, did not last, and they parted, for the last time, in 1898. He wrote little in those last years, he talked, as always, brilliantly, to the few friends who visited him in Paris, to young writers who came to meet him, to strangers in cafes, and he told stories, he made jokes, he was, even in exile, the great talker he had always been, but he could not, or would not, write another play, another novel, another book. It was as if prison had taken something from him that he could not get back, a belief in himself, a belief in the world, a belief that art could save him.
He died on 30 November 1900 in Paris, at the age of forty-six, in a small hotel room, after an operation on his ear, after a period of illness that had left him weak, in pain, and largely alone. He was, by most accounts, received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed, a return, in his last hours, to the faith of his childhood, and he was buried in Paris, in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where his tomb, with a large, strange statue by Jacob Epstein, is now visited by thousands of people every year, who leave lipstick kisses on the stone, who leave flowers, who leave notes, and who remember a man who was, in his lifetime, punished for being who he was, and who, a century later, is loved for being who he was.
His work survived him, slowly at first, and then, in the twentieth century, completely. His plays returned to the stage, his novel was read again, his fairy tales were read to children, De Profundis was published, The Ballad of Reading Gaol was recognised as a great poem, and Wilde himself became, not a criminal, but a martyr, a symbol of the artist punished by a cruel society, a symbol of gay rights, a symbol of wit, of beauty, of the right to be different. In 2017, in Britain, he was, along with thousands of other men convicted under the same law, posthumously pardoned, a formal recognition, more than a century after his death, that the law that had destroyed him was wrong.
My Take:
I think Oscar Wilde is the writer who makes me laugh and makes me angry at the same time, and I think that is exactly what he wanted. He makes me laugh because his plays are so witty, so clever, so full of lines that I still remember years after I first read them, lines that turn an ordinary idea upside down and show you how silly it was in the first place. He makes me angry because the world he lived in punished him for being himself, because a man who wrote beautiful plays and beautiful stories was sent to prison for loving another man, and because that punishment destroyed him, and destroyed his family, and destroyed a talent that should have given us many more plays, many more books, many more years of talk.
What I admire most about Wilde is his wit, and I do not mean wit as a party trick. I mean wit as a way of thinking, as a way of seeing through lies, as a way of saying, in a single sentence, what other people need a whole book to say. When he says that the truth is rarely pure and never simple, he is not only being clever. He is telling you something true about the world, something that most people are afraid to say, because they want the truth to be simple, and it is not. When he says that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness, he is not only making a joke. He is showing you how society judges people, how it blames them for things they cannot control, how it turns tragedy into a matter of manners. That is not only funny. It is wise, and it is brave.
I also admire his belief in beauty, because it is a belief that is easy to mock and hard to live by. Wilde believed that art should be beautiful, that life should be beautiful, that a room, a coat, a flower, a sentence, should be beautiful for its own sake, not because it is useful, not because it is moral, not because it will make you rich. That belief sounds, to many people, like a luxury, like something only a rich man can afford, and in Wilde’s time, it was, in many ways, a luxury. But I think it is also a serious belief, because it says that beauty matters, that it is not a decoration, that it is a need, as real as food or shelter, and that a life without beauty is a smaller life. I think Wilde was right about that, and I think the world would be better if more people believed it.
His novel, Dorian Gray, is the book I think about most, because it is a book about a fear that I think many of us share: the fear of growing old, the fear of losing our beauty, the fear that the portrait in the attic, the true self we hide, will be found out. Dorian stays young, but his portrait grows old, and in the end, he cannot escape it. He stabs the portrait, and he dies, old and ugly, while the portrait is young again. That is a terrifying ending, and it is also a true one, because we cannot, in the end, hide who we are. We can pretend, we can wear a beautiful face, we can live a life of pleasure, but the portrait, the truth, will always be there, waiting. Wilde knew that, and he wrote it, and he lived it, in a way that is both sad and honest.
I think about his trial a lot, and I feel, every time I read about it, a mixture of anger and sadness. He sued Queensberry for libel, a decision that, in hindsight, was a terrible mistake, and he did it because Bosie encouraged him, because he believed, as a witty man, that he could talk his way out of anything, and because he believed, as an honest man, that he should not have to hide. He was wrong about the first two things, and he was right about the third, and that is the tragedy: he was right to refuse to hide, and the world punished him for being right. The trial was not a fair trial. It was a public humiliation, a reading of his letters, his novel, his poems, as if they were evidence of a crime, and it was, in effect, a trial of art itself, a trial that said, in plain terms, that a writer who writes about beauty, about desire, about a different kind of love, is a criminal. That is a frightening idea, and it is one that is still, in some parts of the world, true today.
De Profundis is the work I return to when I want to understand Wilde not as a wit but as a man. It is a long letter, written in prison, to Bosie, and it is angry, it is sad, it is loving, it is forgiving, and it is, above all, honest. Wilde writes about his mistakes, about his love for Bosie, about his anger at Bosie, about his belief that suffering has taught him something, and about his hope that he can live a different life after prison. It is not a witty letter in the usual sense. It is a serious letter, a letter from a man who has lost everything and is trying to make sense of it, and it shows a side of Wilde that his plays do not show: a man who can be humble, who can admit he was wrong, who can learn from pain. I think that letter is, in many ways, his greatest work, because it is the work in which he stops performing and starts telling the truth.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol is the poem I find hardest to read, because it is about a man who is hanged, about prison, about the way the law kills, and about Wilde’s own experience of being in prison, of watching a man die, of knowing that he, too, was in a place where men were broken. The poem is beautiful, it is rhythmic, it is haunting, and it is, in a way, Wilde’s farewell to the world of wit and beauty, a farewell to the man he had been, and an introduction to the man he had become: a man who had seen suffering, who had lived it, and who could write about it with a clarity that his earlier work did not have. I think that poem deserves to be read more widely, because it shows that Wilde was not only a wit, but a poet who could write about the darkest things in life.
I think about Constance Wilde, his wife, a great deal, because her story is often forgotten in Wilde’s story, and it should not be. She loved him, she married him, she had two sons with him, she believed in him, and she was, in the end, forced to change her name, to take her sons away, to live in exile, and to die young, at thirty-nine, while Wilde was in prison or shortly after. That is a tragedy, not only for Wilde but for Constance, and for Cyril and Vyvyan, who lost their father and then their mother, and who grew up without either parent. I do not want to blame Wilde for that, and I do not want to blame Constance for that. I want to say that the law that punished Wilde punished his whole family, and that the cost of that punishment was paid not only by Wilde but by the people who loved him, and that is a cost that is still, today, paid by families in many parts of the world, when a person is punished for being who they are.
His sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, are the part of his story I find saddest, because they were children, they did nothing wrong, and they lost their father, not because he died, but because he was taken away, because he was sent to prison, because he was disgraced, and because they were not allowed to see him. Cyril died in the First World War, at the age of thirty, and Vyvyan lived to old age, and wrote about his father, and tried, in his own way, to understand him. That is a sad story, and it is a reminder that punishment does not only punish the person who is punished. It punishes everyone around them, especially children, who are the least able to understand why.
I think about his last years in Paris, and I feel a deep sadness, because he was a man who had been the most famous talker in London, and he ended his life in a small hotel room in Paris, poor, ill, largely alone, talking, still, brilliantly, to the few friends who came to see him, but unable to write another play, unable to write another book, unable to do the work that had made him famous. That is a terrible ending for a writer, to lose the ability to write, to lose the belief that writing matters, to lose the world that had once listened to him. I think prison took that from him, and I think that is the greatest crime of his punishment: not that it sent him to prison for two years, but that it took from him the rest of his life as a writer, the plays he might have written, the books he might have written, the talk that might have become art.
If I could show one Wilde play to a person who had never seen him, I would show The Importance of Being Earnest, because it is perfect, because it is funny, because it is, on the surface, a silly farce about two men who invent a brother named Ernest, and underneath, a serious play about identity, about names, about the lies we tell to be free. I would also show them Dorian Gray, because it is a novel that will make them think, and will make them afraid, and will make them understand, in a way that no lecture can, what it is to hide your true self, and what it costs.
I think Wilde’s legacy is, in the end, a simple one: he taught us that wit can be wisdom, that beauty matters, that art should be free, and that a person should not be punished for loving differently. That last lesson is, I think, the most important, because it is a lesson that the world is still learning, slowly, painfully, in many countries, and Wilde, who paid for it with his life, is now, a century later, a symbol of that lesson, a man whose name is spoken with love, whose plays are performed everywhere, whose tomb in Paris is covered in kisses, and whose pardon, in 2017, was a formal recognition that the law that destroyed him was wrong. That pardon came too late for Wilde, and too late for Constance, and too late for Cyril, but it came, and it matters, because it says, plainly, that the world was wrong, and that Wilde was right to be himself.
I do not think Wilde was a saint, and I do not think he wanted to be one. He was vain, he was reckless, he made terrible mistakes, he hurt people he loved, he trusted the wrong person, he sued when he should not have sued, and he paid for those mistakes. But he was also brilliant, generous, funny, kind, and brave, and his work, his plays, his novel, his stories, his letter from prison, his poem about Reading Gaol, are still with us, still read, still performed, still loved, a hundred years after his death. That is not a small legacy. It is, in fact, one of the largest a writer can leave, and it is a legacy that was built not in spite of his suffering but, in part, because of it, because suffering taught him, in prison, what wit alone could not teach him: that life is serious, that love is serious, and that art, at its best, is serious too.
In the end, I think of Wilde not as a criminal, not as a martyr, not as a wit, but as a man, a man who loved beauty, who loved talk, who loved his wife and his sons, who loved Bosie, who made mistakes, who suffered, and who wrote, in his best work, with a clarity and a beauty that still moves me. I think that is enough to remember him by, and I think that is why, a century after his death, we still read him, still perform him, still quote him, and still, in Paris, leave kisses on his tomb.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Oscar Wilde’s most famous play?
The Importance of Being Earnest, first performed in London on 14 February 1895, is his most famous and most performed play, a farce about two men who invent a fictional brother named Ernest to escape their duties and end up discovering that one of them really is Ernest.
What is The Picture of Dorian Gray about?
It is a novel from 1890 about a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, who wishes his portrait would age instead of him, stays young while the hidden portrait grows old and corrupt with his sins, and dies when he stabs the portrait in horror.
Why was Oscar Wilde sent to prison in 1895?
After he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel and lost, he was tried for gross indecency under the law of the time, convicted, and sentenced to two years of hard labour, a punishment for his relationships with men that is now widely regarded as unjust.
Who was Lord Alfred Douglas in Oscar Wilde’s life?
Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, was a young aristocrat with whom Wilde had a close relationship, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry, whose accusation against Wilde led to the libel trial and then to Wilde’s own trial and imprisonment.
What did Oscar Wilde write in prison?
In prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter to Bosie reflecting on his life, his mistakes and suffering, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a poem about a fellow prisoner who was hanged, published after his release in 1898.
Was Oscar Wilde married and did he have children?
Yes, he married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons, Cyril, born in 1885, and Vyvyan, born in 1886, though the family was broken apart by his trial and imprisonment, and Constance died in 1898 at the age of thirty-nine.
When did Oscar Wilde die and where is he buried?
He died on 30 November 1900 in Paris, at the age of forty-six, after living in exile under the name Sebastian Melmoth, and he is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where his tomb is visited by thousands of people every year.
