Full Name: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde; Profession: Irish poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, wit, and cultural critic, renowned for his plays, fiction, and aphorisms; Nationality: Irish; Born: 1854-10-16; Birthplace: 21 Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland, in an Anglo-Irish professional and intellectual family milieu; Generation: 19th-century Victorian literary generation rooted in late Victorian culture and aesthetics; Chinese Zodiac: Wood Tiger (Year of the Tiger, as 1854-10-16 falls between the Chinese New Year of 1854-01-29 and 1855-02-16, the Wood Tiger year); Zodiac Sign: Libra (October 16 lies within the Libra period from about September 23 to October 22); Age in 2026: 172 (would-be age in 2026 based on his birth year 1854, though he died aged 46 in 1900); Marital Status: Married to Constance Lloyd (married on 1884-05-29 in London; the couple became effectively estranged after the late 1880s but never legally divorced); Children: Two sons, Cyril Wilde (later Cyril Holland) and Vyvyan Wilde (later Vyvyan Holland), born in 1885 and 1886, respectively, who were raised under the Holland surname after their mother separated from Wilde and moved abroad following his imprisonment; Description: Oscar Wilde was one of the most influential writers of the late 19th century, a leading figure of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements whose dazzling wit, paradoxical epigrams, and brilliantly constructed social comedies such as “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” together with his only novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” made him a defining voice of Victorian literature and a symbol of artistic individuality and resistance to conventional morality; born to prominent parents—Sir William Wilde, a pioneering otologist, and Jane Wilde, a nationalist poet—he studied at Trinity College Dublin and then at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he absorbed classical culture and aesthetic philosophy, later becoming a celebrated lecturer and essayist who popularized ideas of “art for art’s sake” and cultivated a persona of flamboyant dress, conversation, and public presence in London’s salons and theatres; his career reached a peak in the early 1890s as his plays dominated the West End, but his intimate relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas brought him into conflict with Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, leading to a disastrous libel suit and the subsequent criminal prosecution for “gross indecency” with men, after which Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labour that destroyed his health, fortunes, and social standing and later made him an enduring gay icon and emblem of persecution under Victorian morality laws; in prison he transformed his suffering into literature, most famously in the long letter “De Profundis,” and after his release in 1897 he lived in exile on the Continent, chiefly in France under the alias Sebastian Melmoth, writing the poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” and continuing to refine his critique of hypocrisy in religion, law, and class, while his conversation and presence remained legendary among friends and admirers despite poverty and declining health; his works and life have since influenced generations of authors, dramatists, and LGBTQ+ activists, and he is widely regarded as the single most famous historical figure born on October 16, with his reputation as a master of comedy, satire, and aphorism continuing to shape modern views of wit, camp, and aesthetic rebellion; Cause of Death: Died in Paris, France, on 1900-11-30 from acute meningitis following a severe middle-ear infection (an otogenic bacterial meningoencephalitis originating in chronic otitis media), officially certified on his death record as cerebral meningitis, a medical irony given his father’s pioneering work in otology.