Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas - Hardcover

Douglas Murray

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786866535 ISBN 13: 9780786866533

Publisher: Miramax, 2000

Synopsis

Looks at the life of the English poet, including his relationship with Oscar Wilde and his role in Wilde's trial and imprisonment, and his "second life" after he married, converted to Catholicism, and was imprisoned for libeling Winston Churchill.

About this title

About the Author

Douglas Murray began writing this book when he was 14 years old. He is now 20, and is an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford. This is his first book.

Reviews

"Intriguing."

Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, had the face and body of a classic Greek statue, and his life, in which fate and his own hubris interacted disastrously, could constitute a Greek tragedy. One comes away from this assiduously researched and percipient biography of Oscar Wilde's notorious lover, once considered "among the foremost younger English poets," with an indelible impression of a man endowed by fortune who was destroyedAfirst by the court trial brought on by his father, Lord Queensberry, and then by his own rash behavior. First-time author Murray, who is only 23 and still an undergraduate at Oxford, is impressive in his mature assessment of Bosie's emotional instability and ruinous need for revenge, tracing much of it to the strain of insanity in the Douglas family. While his account of the infamous 1895 libel trial is mainly sourced from earlier books and records, Murray's access to the further details of Douglas's life through letters and journals in Britain and in the Berg collection here breaks new ground. Treated shamefully by Wilde after the playwright's release from prison, and then vilified by English society, Douglas developed a persecution mania that inspired many of his unhinged accusations. As Murray shows, at every point in his life Douglas made poor judgmentsAsabotaging his career as a poet and editor, resorting to libel and rushing to litigation in a clearly hostile court system, destroying a strange but loving marriage, losing his son and his social standingAand then even criminally libeling Winston Churchill. Eventually, Douglas was left penniless and alone. On the evidence Murray presents here, however, Douglas's small but eloquent poetical oeuvre should survive the sad scandal of his life. B&w photos not seen by PW. Agents, Belinda Harley and Mary Pachnos. First serial to Talk magazine. (June) FYI: Douglas's papers were embargoed by the British Home Office until 2043, but when Murray was 16 and at Eton, he persuaded the Home Office to grant him access to those papers.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"…a stunningly elegant book…sometimes charming, sometimes chilling… moves with confidence and avoids the minutiae that clogs so many modern biographies."

Edition details

• Publisher: Miramax
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786866535
• ISBN 13: 9780786866533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 374