First off, I completely left off Joyce (whoops!). I know some of you are probably thinking "but, wait, he's Irish, not British...". Very true. But so, in fact, was Wilde. The reason we're more prone to remember Joyce as "the Irish author" over others (such as Wilde) is that Joyce both lived in Ireland (and wrote extensively about it) and was notably preoccupied with the discomfort he felt in speaking and writing in a language that was not his own. Many of his literary masterpieces arose from his internal battles over the role of the British language in his life and fiction; he felt it to be simultaneously his and yet alien to him-- somehow outside his control... always just escaping him.
Anywhoo, Wilde didn't have those very nationalized anxieties and lived and worked quite comfortably in the Britain (until he was imprisoned, of course). So, to finally get to the point of why I'm including either of these authors, its because, although not British, they both represent different and invaluable perspectives on linguistic expression and the power of cultural to shape the personal.

And, as an update, right now I'm about half way through Swann's Way.