Oscar Wilde was a major influence on the culture of his time, and remains relevant today, as a model of wit and style, a sexual icon, and a moral example. John Stokes shows how in the 1880s and 1890s Wilde played a vital part in the development of modern culture, inspiring others to carry his ideas on into the twentieth century. Stokes examines the evidence of diaries, letters, dramatizations of Wilde's plays and impersonations of the man himself, and discusses Wilde's relationship to fin-de-siecle and twentieth-century ideas.