workingclasshistory:

On this day, 16 October 1854, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from Trinity College, Wilde left for Oxford and then London, where he became an advocate of libertarian socialism and an early inspiration for what would, many years later, become a movement for LGBT+ rights. Wilde’s most overt political statements are to be found in his essay, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” in which he observed that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” He was a leading proponent of aestheticism and became famous as the author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. At the height of his fame he was convicted of gross indecency after unsuccessfully prosecuting his male lover’s father for libel. He was sentenced to two years hard labour and his experiences in prison inspired his final work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He lived his final years in exile and poverty and died of meningitis at the age of 46.
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