Oscar Wilde - fully Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900) - remains a very modern character in the sense that his personality and the more sensational parts of his life story are as well known to many as his work. His wit and love of paradox have remained in numerous, widely quoted epigrams, but under an air of careless irony, almost cynicism, he wrote memorable and enduring works in a number of genres, notably poetry and theater. In the early 1890's, he was one of London's most popular playwrights and several of his plays are regularly performed today. But his novels and short stories have also endured - if often overshadowed by the tragic turn in his life after he unwisely sued his male lover's father for libel and ended up in jail for two years, condemned (as a gay man) of "gross indecency" before leaving for France, where he died in poverty at forty-six.