A prolific writer, essayist, critic and playwright of successful comedies, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) represents the prototypal image of the English dandy with his distinguished bearing air and refined style. Professor Fernando Galván addresses the Irish writer’s aesthetic theories using his biography –his formative years, trips to the United States and France, family...– and analyses his works, paying particular attention to his essays about art, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and the letters he wrote during his imprisonment for his homosexuality, known as De Profundis.