My Friendship with Oscar Wilde

“No other living creature has been treated as I have been treated, and has invoked in vain, as I have done, the law of his country to help him against a conspiracy of persecution and blackmail which has gone on for more than thirty years, and is still going on to this day.”

So writes Lord Alfred Douglas in his memoir, originally published in 1929, in which he sought to rehabilitate his name and that of Oscar Wilde.

One of the most notorious celebrities of his day, he was the amanuensis of Oscar Wilde and son of the man who ruined Wilde, Lord Queensbury. Recently the subject of the play ‘The Judas Kiss’, and portrayed in the film ‘Wilde’ by Jude Law, the man nicknamed ‘Bosie’ writes of his life and times, including a prison sentence for libel and the cause of Wilde’s incarceration at a time when homosexuality was an offense.

Seeing himself as the victim of the Wilde scandal, Lord Alfred married and settled down to life as a poet, writer and magazine editor.

He went bankrupt in 1913, was prosecuted for libel, notably against Winston Churchill, and spent time in the courts fighting to clear his damaged name.

In his memoir he offers his own view on the events of the previous sixty years of his life using letters and articles. He also refutes the rumours spread by Wilde himself, including one where he denied receiving any money from his old friend in his final years.

Almost a century on, and in a world where men can marry whomever they please, the life of Lord Alfred Douglas stands as a history of England before the modern era.

‘My Friendship with Oscar Wilde’ is an illuminating biography of one England’s most famous writers.

It was first published in the UK as ‘The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas’.

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945) was a poet, magazine editor and writer. He befriended Oscar Wilde in a relationship which was seen as illegal in Britain at the time, and wrote several books about the friendship. He was editor of the magazine ‘The Academy’ before serving time in jail for libel.

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