Focusing on the last quarter of the nineteenth century, The Wilde Years features Oscar Wilde as a central, catalytic figure linking two artistic capitals, London and Paris. Wilde is presented as a multi-faceted artist, whose major achievement was language, with which he contributed to the development of artistic and cultural movements of his age. In his lifetime, Wilde was praised as a poet, writer, and, in particular, playwright, but this publication throws new light on his lesser-known work as an art critic, journalist and progressive political thinker. The book is a tribute to the man who, in his own words, 'stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age.' Celebrated for his wit and flamboyant personality, Oscar Wilde was a central figure in the artistic worlds of fin-de-siecle London and Paris. He was a poet, playwright, art critic and, above all, he was known as a virtuoso 'conversationalist.' Furthermore, the extremity of his fate - imprisonment following his trials in 1895 for homosexual activities - made his name unforgettable as a 'martyr' of the time.