Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854-November 30, 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After his studies at Oxford University, he became well-known after publishing The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). He also wrote many popular plays, employing witty comedy to compare intolerant idealism with the need for acceptance and forgiveness. His best-known play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), made a farce of the shallowness of high British society. His last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1897), was written about his time incarcerated after a legal dispute with the Marquess of Queensberry; Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison for an alleged homosexual relationship with the Marquess' son, Lord Alfred Douglas.