“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar; it will cease to be popular.”

Oscar Wilde (1854 to 1900)

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).

He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake, and he was the object of celebrated civil and criminal suits involving homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment (1895–97).