Oscar Wilde renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions. He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of "Melmoth the Wanderer" (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle). Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the "Daily Chronicle", describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform.
Sebastian Haffner considered as one of the most successful German authors in the history of the 19th and 20th century writing for a broad, nonacademic audience. He wrote most of his works in German, some of which have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Hebrew and other languages. The manuscript of "Defying Hitler", discovered posthumously by his son, Oliver Pretzel, is a memoir of the Nazis' rise to power, as witnessed by Haffner before he went into exile. Sebastian Haffner Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999), better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and author.