Oscar Wilde is often remembered as much for his personality — and personal life — as he is for his literary achievements. Born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, into an intellectually rich household, Wilde showed his smarts from an early age and often won scholarly awards in grade school. He went to both Trinity College and the University of Oxford on scholarship and earned top marks at both. At Oxford, he began exploring creative writing, and in 1878, his poem “Ravenna” won the school’s coveted Newdigate Prize for the best student poem.

After graduating, Wilde moved to London and published his first poetry collection in 1881. His trademark flamboyance and wit blossomed in his high-society artistic circles. In 1882, he embarked on a lecture tour of the U.S. and Canada, where he espoused the aestheticism of the era, advocating that art should be created for art’s sake alone. Upon his return, he married, had two children, and worked as a critic and magazine editor at Woman’s World. His most productive literary years followed: Beginning in 1888, he published the children’s book The Happy Prince and Other Tales, his essay collection Intentions (1891), and his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). His first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, opened in 1892, and three years later, he produced his most renowned play, The Importance of Being Earnest.

Yet even at its peak, Wilde’s success was overshadowed by an affair with English writer Lord Alfred Douglas, a matter that led to his imprisonment in 1895 for homosexuality. After serving his two-year sentence of hard labor, he moved to France, depleted, and wrote his poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” in exile. He died three years later in 1900 at the age of 46.