Bosie on Wilde: A powerful force for evil who sold his soul to the devil
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.A vicious and previously unpublished diatribe against Oscar Wilde by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas is expected to fetch £600,000 when auctioned by Sotheby's later this month.
A vicious and previously unpublished diatribe against Oscar Wilde by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas is expected to fetch £600,000 when auctioned by Sotheby's later this month.
In a set of corrected page proofs for The Wilde Myth, which was written in 1916 but remained unissued for fear the publishers would be prosecuted for libel, Lord Douglas - nicknamed "Bosie", by the celebrated writer - warns the present and future youth of England against being corrupted by the likes of Wilde.
"He was one of the most powerful forces for evil that has happened in Europe for the last three hundred years," declares Douglas. "I do not know of any man who more truly or literally sold himself to the Devil than he did."
Lord Douglas, by now a devout Catholic who had rejected his homosexual tendencies, attacks Wilde as perhaps only the reformed and rejected can. He concludes: "The Wilde myth has devastated my life from every point of view. It devastated my life when I was victim to its illusions, and it has devastated my life ever since I escaped from those illusions."
The work, bearing Douglas's corrections and one of only only two proof copies known to exist, should fetch up to £50,000 at the 104-lot sale at Sotheby's in London on 29 October.
Wilde's affair with Douglas sparked the writer's downfall after his disastrous prosecution of Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, for criminal libel, instigated after the marquis left a visiting card at the Albermarle club famously inscribed with the words: "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic]...".
Wilde's prosecution of Queensberry ended with a not guilty verdict and he was arrested on a charge of gross indecency.
Wilde was sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour, which broke both his health and his career. After his release from prison he lived mainly abroad under the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. He died in Paris on 30 November, 1900.
Statements which were instrumental in bringing about Wilde's downfall, picked up in a London junk shop for a pittance during the 1950s, reveal sordid details of his sexual escapades.
The archive for sale on 29 October includes Wilde's own manuscript copy, heavily revised, of chapter 16 of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The document, one of six chapters that Wilde wrote after the publishers asked for a longer story, is expected to fetch £80,000. The catalogue for the sale of his Chelsea household property in April 1895 - one of only four to have survived - is likely to realise £60,000.
A first edition copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray - inscribed to Marcel Schwob, the French symbolist writer - is estimated at £35,000, and a presentation copy of The Importance of Being Earnest, inscribed to Arthur Clifton, should fetch £60,000.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments