New Delhi, May 1 -- Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin in 1854, became one of the great stylists of English literature after first gaining notice at Oxford as a scholar, wit and spokesman for the Aesthetic movement.

His enduring reputation rests on The Picture of Dorian Gray and on comedies such as Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest, where he proved himself a master of the epigram. Wilde's career was later shattered by the trials that led to his imprisonment in 1895-97, but Britannica says that, despite that fall, he came to be seen as the very personification of wit and sophistication.

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." - Oscar Wilde

In Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III, the line appears in dialogu...