After completing school, Wilde moved to London and continued to write. He also began to lecture, meaning give educational speeches, throughout the United States and Great Britain. On a speaking tour of the United States, he gave 140 speeches in just nine months. In 1884, Wilde married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer, and they had two sons in two years. Over the next ten years he wrote almost all of his most important poems, books, and plays. Wilde was part of an artistic movement called the aesthetics, which means appearance, and valued beauty most of all. An example of this is his novel “The Picture of Dorian Grey”, where a handsome man has a picture that ages while he stays young and good-looking. In 1895, Wilde was imprisoned for two years for his immoral behavior. He wrote about his prison experience in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. After his release he left England, never to return. He divided his time between France and Italy, living in poverty. Except for letters, he never tried to return to writing. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900.
