With the production of these plays Wilde became not only a caricatured celebrity but a popular success. He lived extravagantly. In 1895 the applause was turned to execration, when he lost in a prosecution for criminal libel that he brought against the Marquis of Queensberry, and was himself arrested on a more serious charge. The jury disagreed, and he was released on bail, perhaps in the hope that he would leave the country. He waited the re-trial, was convicted, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour, which sentence he served. Towards the end of his time in prison he wrote the letter from which De Profundis (published in 1905) is extracted. After his release he went to Berneval-sur-mer, near Dieppe, where he began The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which he revised in Naples and Paris, and published pseudonymously in 1898. He also wrote two letters on prison abuses, which were published in The Daily Chronicle on May 28, 1897, and March 24, 1898. He lived in Italy, Switzerland and France. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900. He was buried on December 3 in the Bagneux Cemetery. On July 20, 1909, his remains were moved to Père Lachaise.
FOOTNOTE:
"Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!"