evidence: Oscar Wilde was born in Westland Row, Dublin on October 16th, 1854 to an eminent surgeon, William Wilde and the famous nationalist poet, Lady Jane Wilde, known as Speranza (her Selected Poems were published in Dublin in 1900). He settled in London in 1879. In 1882 he embarked on a lecture tour of the United States, where he famously declared on his arrival that he had nothing to declare but his genius. In 1883 he visited Paris, where among others he met de Goncourt, Daudet, and Hugo. His play Vera was produced in New York the same year. In 1884, Wilde married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of a wealthy Dublin barrister, by whom he had two sons in 1885 and 1886. [...] On 27th of May 1895, Wilde was sentenced at the Old Bailey in London to two years hard labour on a charge of sodomy, arising out of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, and instigated by Douglas’s father, The Marqess of Queensbury. Wilde was declared bankrupt in July of that year, and his wife and children changed their name and went to live on the continent. His mother died while he was still in jail in 1896. He was released from Reading Gaol on the 19th of May 1897 and went into exile in Berneval, France.