Book Description

Caspar Wintermans' eagerly awaited and highly controversial biography of Lord Alfred Douglas sets out to defend Oscar Wilde's beloved Bosie from over a century of false accusations, lies, and misinformation. By directly engaging with the source of these attacks, Wilde's De Profundis upon which most previous biographies have been based, Caspar Wintermans is able to show that this was a work written in the depths of despair while Wilde was incarcerated, being passionate, cruel, and deeply untruthful. Wintermans proves that, far from being a rakish homme fatale, Alfred Douglas was in fact a supportive and kind lover who worshipped the playwright and whose life was destroyed by both those who loved and hated the ostentatiously homosexual Wilde. Accompanied by a long overdue annotated anthology of Douglas' poetry, Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work is a revealing and moving representation of a tragically misunderstood poet.