Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. n Pen, Pencil and Poison: A Study in Green, Wilde identifies with the artist, forger and poisoner Thomas Griffiths Wainewright . In Wilde’s portrait of Wainewright, artistic sensibility and rebellion against society are two sides of the same coin. Wainewright, Wilde noted, “had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.” Synthetic green was created with arsenic during the Victorian era, so the poisoner Wainewright had even more reason to like the colour.
