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Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet.
After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his
epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment for homosexuality, followed by his early death.
Continued on Wikipedia
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), nicknamed "Bosie", was a British
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author, poet and translator, better known as Wilde's intimate friend and lover. Much of his early poetry was Uranian (a precursor of gay) in theme, though he tended, later in life, to distance himself from both Wilde's influence and his own role as a Uranian poet.
Continued on Wikipedia
At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde sued Bosie's father for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and imprisoned for two years, held to hard labour. In prison he wrote De Profundis (written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.
The following biographies, studies and miscellenea relating to Wilde, listed by date of publication, are currently available from Arbery Books. The first section covers Wilde directly; the section below lists books about / by Douglas and other members of Wilde's circle.
What Never Dies
by Barbey d'Aurevilly
translation falsely attributed to Oscar Wilde
1902 1st / only edition, Private Printed, Paris, France
Good, £90.00
Ménage à trois between an aging woman, her young daughter and a teenage boy by a celebrated French author of the time. The translation
cashed in on the notoriety of the recently- deceased Oscar Wilde by crediting Wilde's nom-de-voyage "Sebastian Melmoth" as the translator, and adding O.W. in large letters to the cover.
more details and photographs
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Oscar Wilde and His Mother
by Anna, Comtesse de Brémont
1911 1st edition, Everett, London, UK
Very Good, £50.00
Interesting early portrait of Wilde and Speranza, his mother, in a somewhat florid style.
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Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions
including the hitherto unpublished FULL AND FINAL CONFESSION by Lord Alfred Douglas and MY MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE by Bernard Shaw
by Frank Harris
1930 1st edition thus , Star Books / Garden City Publishing, Garden City, NY, USA
Good, £10.00
An earlier edition of this title was first published in 1916. This expanded version, with the Alfred Douglas confession and Bernard Shaw essay, first appeared in 1930.
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The Life of Oscar Wilde
by Hesketh Pearson
1947 (orig 1946), Methuen, London, UK
Good, £10.00
One of the best-known biographies of the playwright, essential for any Wilde aficionado.
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Seven Friends
by Louis Marlow
1953 1st edition, Richards Press, London, UK
Good, £12.50
"In his new book Mr Louis Marlow presents us with a series of portraits of some figures of the contemporary literary scene whom he has known more or less intimately in the course of the years, [including] Oscar Wilde, with whom the author corresponded when he was a young man, although they never actually met. He is able to quote Wilde's letters to him, and he includes also an interesting series of hitherto unpublished letters from Wilde which were written to another friend of the author's the late George Ives."
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
1976 (orig 1890), Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK
Bargain, £2.75 (UK p&p included)
The famous novel about the young man who commits every sin and stays young while his portrait ages.
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Bargain books are secondhand books with minor flaws; discounts available for orders of three or more.
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De Profundis and Other Writings
by Oscar Wilde
1980 (orig 1954), Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK
Bargain, £3.50 (UK p&p included)
Includes essays, poems and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
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Bargain books are secondhand books with minor flaws; discounts available for orders of three or more.
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The Truth About Oscar Wilde
by Lewis Broad
1957 (orig 1954), Arrow, London, UK
Fair, £4.00
"With a frankness impossible to previous writers Lewis Broad tells the whole absorbing story of Oscar Wilde's brilliant and tragic life with special emphasis on his psychological make-up and the conduct which led to his ultimate disgrace."
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The Stringed Lute: An Evocation in Dialogue of Oscar Wilde
by John Furnell
1955 1st edition, Rider & Co, London UK
Good, £12.50
"OSCAR (laying his hand on Bosie's knee): What do you want from life? Do you know - yet? For you have only to ask to have.
BOSIE (fiercely): I want - everything! Every experience, every sensation."
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The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde
collected by Stephen Calloway & David Colvin
1997, BBC / Orion, London, UK
Bargain, £2.50 (UK p&p included)
A collection of the witty prose and verse of Oscar Wilde published to coincide with the release of the film Wilde, starring Stephen Fry.
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Bargain books are secondhand books with minor flaws; discounts available for orders of three or more.
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The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde
by Neil McKenna
2004 (orig 2003) 1st edition, Arrow, London UK
Very Good, £12.50
Biography of Wilde focusing on his sexual life, based on previously-known and hitherto unpublished resources.
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The City of the Soul
by Anonymous [Lord Alfred Douglas]
1899 1st edition, Grant Richards, London, UK
Fair, £150.00
Thirty-eight poems, none explicitly gay although several may be read as having a homoerotic subtext.
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Sonnets
by Lord Alfred Douglas
1935 1st edition, Rich and Cowan, London, UK
Good, £100.00
Forty-one poems, several published in the UK for the first time in this volume.
Some of the poems have comments on when they were written or other pertinent information. On In Praise of Shame, which was quoted in Wilde's trial, Douglas writes "I take this opportunity of referring enquirers about its meaning to the last verse of the second chapter of the book of Genesis".
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Except where stated, the above price(s) do not include post and packing.
Discounts
on packing & postage are available to Arbery Books subscribers.
Discounts are also available on orders of three books and more.
The following are no longer available from Arbery Books. Contact us if you are looking for a title by or about Oscar Wilde or Lord Alfred Douglas.
Sebastian Melmoth
and
The Soul of Man
by Oscar Wilde
1904 1st edition thus , Arthur L Humphreys, London, UK
signed and annotated by Percy L Babington
Very Good, £100.00
Rare volume published four years after Wilde's death to cash in on the playwright's notoriety. With 130 pages of epigrams and aphorisms culled from Wilde's books, and his 1891 essay republished Under Socialism dropped from the title, it contains no new work. Babington's claim to fame is his 1925 bibliography of John Addington Symonds and a book of poetry published in the same decade.
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The Wildes of Merrion Square
by Patrick Byrne
n.d. (orig 1953), Digit (Brown, Watson Ltd), London, UK
Portrait of Wilde's parents and their life in Dublin
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