Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright who wrote several poems, epigrams, plays, and one novel. He was one of London's most popular playwrights, having written plays like The Duchess of Padua (1883), Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), among others. Oscar Wilde's reputation, however, rests on his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was heavily criticized for its dark and indecent themes. Popular newspapers labelled it ' unclean' and ' poisonous' while reviewers felt that the text itself was offensive to the reader. But Oscar Wilde fiercely defended his novel in the British press and thus became a spokesperson for the Aesthetic movement in England, which advocated art for art's sake.