Oscar Wilde was the most celebrated conversationalist in Victorian London — a man whose plays filled theaters, whose epigrams filled newspapers, and whose wit made him the most famous personality in England. Then he sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, a decision everyone around him begged him not to make, and the trial that followed destroyed him completely.

This episode traces Wilde from his meteoric rise as playwright and cultural provocateur through the catastrophic libel suit, the criminal trials, the two years of hard labor in Reading Gaol, and the broken exile in Paris where he died at forty-six.

• Wilde’s rise as London’s most celebrated wit and the plays that made him rich and famous
• The fateful decision to sue the Marquess of Queensberry and the evidence it exposed
• The criminal trials, conviction, and the brutal two years of hard labor
• Exile, poverty, and death in Paris — the final chapter of Victorian England’s most spectacular fall