Oscar Wilde (1856-1900), novelist, essayist, poet and wit, as well as playwright, wrote all four of the plays for which he is famous in three short years in his late thirties: 1892-1895. The last of them, The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the best comedies in the English language, opened as he was beginning the libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry which led Wilde to a prison sentence and death in exile in Paris five years later.