Oscar Wilde was a man.
Oscar Wilde . He is remembered for his epigrams , his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , his plays , as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death . At university , Wilde read Greats ; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist , first at Dublin , then at Oxford . As a spokesman for aestheticism , he tried his hand at various literary activities : he published a book of poems , lectured in the United States and Canada on the new `` English Renaissance in Art '' , and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist .