Bosie: The Man, The Poet, The Lover of Oscar Wilde

Remarkable biography of Alfred Douglas (a.k.a. Bosie), Oscar Wilde's nemesis. I think
I'm correct in saying that Murray was still an undergraduate when he wrote this intriguing
book.

I can't really take Wilde's literary output, but he was a fascinating man, and the 'fin-de-siecle'
world in which he moved, and the people who inhabited it with him are all fascinating. This
biography is intended (I think) to be sympathetic to Douglas, but I'm afraid that for me he
was a poisonous little man, a second rate poet, and a self-opinionated, selfish wrecker of
the life of Oscar Wilde (which is not to say that Wilde wasn't equally self-opinionated and
self-destructive). This book shines a light on this shadowy world which is both illuminating
and show more fascinating.

I think it was said of Byron that he was' mad, bad and dangerous to know'.

Seems to me that Douglas was 'mad, bad, sad and dangerous to know'. show less

A fairly dry treatment of a well known story which focuses on events after The Trial of Oscar Wilde. The author draws the story into concentrating on the sad life of Alfred, Lord Douglas (Bosie), a man of obvious talent who was affected until his deathbed by the prejudices of English society at all levels. His own shortcomings, failed marriage, failed friendships, and repudiation of his homosexual self all contributed to a sense of frustration at what he saw as other people's repudiation of his own considerable talent. His one solace was the Catholic Church. A sad and cautionary tale indeed.

The story of a long life that spanned the end of the Victorian age through the Edwardian period and ending in the era of the Second World War. This is the first book that tells the whole story of Lord Alfred Douglas.