Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, was the second son of Sir William Robert and Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. At the age of ten, Wilde entered the well-known Portora Royal School, where he excelled in Greek studies. His interest in Greek continued at Trinity College, Dublin, where John Mahaffy, an eminent Greek scholar who later took Wilde on a tour of Italy, was his tutor.

Wilde was awarded a scholarship in classics from Magdalene College, Oxford, which he entered in 1874. During his fourth year at Oxford, Wilde won the prestigious Newdigate Prize for imitative poetry with a verse praising Ravenna, a city he had visited with Mahaffy and the burial site of Dante. In addition to his studies, Wilde began to develop his role as poseur and aesthete. Wilde received his BA in 1878 and, after an additional year at Oxford, went to London where he began writing.

In 1880 Wilde published and in 1881 he was hired by Richard D'Oyly Carte to boost Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera in America by means of a lecture tour. Dressed in black velvet and a full length fur coat, he spoke on the new aestheticism from New York to San Francisco. He met with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, and Jefferson Davies, among others.

After America, Wilde went to Paris where he wrote another play while visiting with Zola, Hugo, Degas, Pissarro, and other literary and artistic figures. In 1883 an American producer agreed to produce in New York. Its abbreviated run left Wilde disappointed and he returned to England and Ireland where he lectured and wrote about his experiences in America. While visiting Dublin, he renewed an acquaintance with Constance Lloyd, and in May of 1884 they were married. They moved to London and Wilde spent the next few years writing reviews and essays and giving lectures. They had two sons, Cyril (b. 1885) and Vyvyan (b. 1886).

Wilde began editing magazine in 1887, contributed regularly to , and worked on a collection of fairy tales, which were published in 1888. His critical essay and appeared in 1889, and the first version of was published in in 1890. An edited and expanded version of was published in book form in 1891.

1891 proved an eventful year for Wilde. His second play, was produced under the title . He published a second book of fairy stories, , as well as and . Wilde completed another play, which the Lord Chamberlain found unsuitable for the English stage. Over the next four years Wilde published (1893), (1894), (1895), and his most enduring theatrical work, (1895).

In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, father of Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"), an intimate of Wilde's, accused Wilde of posing as a sodomite. Wilde sued for libel and a trial began in April of 1896. Wilde withdrew from the case and was subsequently arrested on charges of gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. After two trials he was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty of two years at hard labor. He served the bulk of his sentence at Reading Gaol where the warden provided him with paper to write what became .

After his release in 1897, Wilde lived in France, Italy, and Switzerland. He renewed his relationship with Bosie; as a result his wife, Constance, who with their children had fled England during his trial, refused to see him. Constance died in 1898. Wilde underwent an operation for an ear infection in October of 1900 from which he never fully recovered. He died in his Paris hotel room on November 30, 1900.