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This video profiles the life of the author Oscar Wilde, who lived in Ireland in Victorian times. Never a shrinking violet, the iconoclastic Wilde cut a colorful figure, with his foppish dress and bohemian ways. He was much admired for his brilliant writing, in such works as The Importance of Being Ernest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. An accusation of homosexuality against Wilde led to a storm of controversy, condemnation, conviction, and imprisonment. Wilde made a literary statement of this experience in the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Two years at hard labor ruined his health; he subsequently expatriated to Paris, where he lived out his years under an assumed name. Archival photographs, diaries, and scholarly commentary tell the story of this unique man of letters.