Customer Reviews

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

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although the life of Oscar Wilde has been written about extensively, that of Lord Alfred Douglas has remained obscure until The appearance of Douglas Murray's biography. The book is a remarkable accomplishment for such a young man and the character of Lord Alfred Douglas, as unpleasant as it may be, is very absorbing. Murray describes the 45 years of Douglas'life after Wilde's death and illuminates the personality of a man who, until now, has been known chiefly as Wilde's lover and companion. Particular attention is paid to Douglas' poetry, which few people seemed to feel was worthy of much critical scutiny before.

It was particularly interesting to me to see Douglas' cantankerous and litigious (sp?) life turn into a parody of his father's similar behavior. This causes me to consider that perhaps the strain of insanity that ran through the Douglas family tree afflicted both father and son.

In any event, Lord Alfred had a largely unhappy life and died penniless - an embarassing condition for an English lord of high breeding. His stint in prison, while well deserved, apparently had a devastating effect on Douglas' health and outlook.

Ironically, I found myself growing more sympathetic towards Douglas toward the end of the book. He seems to have realized that most of his troubles in his later life were self-inflicted and that he had no one to blame but himself.

Altogether, this was a highly informative work which illuminates not only the life of Alfred Douglas but also the times in which he lived and the people with whom he associated.

Douglas Murray has done what I had thought impossible - completely humanized Lord Alfred Douglas and made me forgive and love him.

Up til now I had regarded Bosie as a monster of selfishness and the nemesis of my idol Oscar Wilde. So great was my distaste for him that in my book collection I would not let his work rest on the same shelf as Wilde's.

But this tour de force of a biography, exquisitely researched and crafted without prejudice or partiality, has redeemed the most maligned personality of the Fin de Siecle. Lord Douglas is neither sinner nor saint but merely a man who was his father's son, a fine poet, and a partner in a tragic friendship.

This young author is one to watch. His talent is prodigious. I have been a Wilde fanatic for thirty years, and this book shook me. I read every word hungrily, and wept when I finished the final page. Bravo, Douglas Murray! Thank you for "Bosie".

Like many people I had a pre-formed opinion of Bosie from the various books written about Oscar Wilde, this biography has considerably altered my perception of Lord Alfred Douglas. He was a very complicated character and the book gives a balanced view on all aspects of his life as well as the many facets of Douglas's personality. It deals with the many untruths which surround his relationship with Wilde and includes extracts from Douglas's poetry. I had no idea how much of this there was nor how lovely, after reading sections of it reproduced in the book I now want to read more. By the time I put the book down I felt very moved by the whole tale of this mans life. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Like everyone else I imagine who is interested in Lord Alfred Douglas; I was introduced to him through Oscar Wilde. First, as a villian, but after reading more work about him and Douglas' own accounts of his life, I am less enamored of Wilde than I was and more fascinated my this complex man. His poetry if wonderful and very hard to find, this side of rare book stores. That is why this biography is so special a read. It is well written, researched, and fascinating. If you are an Oscar Wilde fan, or simply interested in the figures of 1890's London; this book is an excellent resourse.

Having read The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde by Joseph Pearce, I decided that it would be interesting to know more about the person who is made out to be the villain in Oscar Wilde's downfall.

Bosie by Douglas Murray is a detailed book chronicling the life of Lord Alfred Douglas. It is a detailed account of a man hounded by family traits, his own desires, repentence, regrets and sad ending. It really is unfair to blame Alfred Douglas for Wilde's downfall. Wilde, if anything, was self destructive and not only destroyed himself, but everyone around him, including his wife and children, as well as Alfred Douglas. Murray is clear that upon renouncing his wasted and immoral youth Douglas became a moralist, like the father he hated, and became addicted to litigating every slight made against him. Wilde's circle of friends and admirers needed someone to blame for his demise, so they picked Lord Alfred Douglas. This book shows that like all moralists Douglas became paranoid and biased, but later in life did truly repent and apologized for all the harm he had done. He died penniless, alone and very, very sad. Like Wilde, Douglas's actions also destroyed his marriage and the life of his child. Bosie by Douglas Murray is required reading for all those who want to make up their own minds on Oscar Wilde and know more about the man who figured so prominently in Wilde's life.

There are a number of reasons why "Bosie" is a remarkable book--even setting aside the youth of the author. (He was 14 when he began the research and 20 when this biography was published.) First, Murray somehow gained the confidence of the surviving family members related to Lord Douglas and his circle, and he enjoyed unprecedented access to both reminiscences and documents. In addition, the author managed to secure the release of the British government files from Douglas's imprisonment--papers that, by law, were to remain sealed for another half century. And third (and foremost), he has upended the portrait of Lord Douglas written by one of the twentieth century's foremost scholars, Richard Ellmann.

As readers of the now-standard biography of Oscar Wilde know, Ellmann portrayed Douglas as a manipulative yet beautiful cipher with not much in the way of wit or intelligence. Murray, in contrast, depicts Douglas as a worthy companion to Wilde (in spite of their frequent and legendary spats) and an artist in his own right. While certainly not on a par with Wilde, Douglas produced a respectable body of work and was, during his life, an appreciated (if litigious) editor. A true assessment of Douglas's worth, I think, would fall somewhere in between these two portraits, although Murray's book contains the more well-rounded assessment: while trying to revive Douglas's reputation, it does not try to whitewash his notoriety and imprudence.

Indeed, most readers will share Murray's fascination with Lord Douglas's life. Even after Wilde's death and Douglas's conversion to Catholicism and renunciation of homosexuality, Douglas refused to fade away, becoming "a man who confessed that he was popularly believed to revel in litigation." And litigate he did: the dramatis personae of Douglas's court cases are a veritable who's who of the English literary scene, and the parade of libels and lawssuits culminates in a bizarre and foolish challenge to none other than Winston Churchill.

Although Douglas's life is perversely intriguing, I am hard-pressed to share Murray's enthusiasm for the poetry itself--and this, of course, may be more a matter of taste than of intrinsic worth. Douglas's oeuvre divides rather neatly into three categories: nonsense verse (mostly for children), biting--and often nasty--lampoons, and staunchly traditional sonnets and lyrics. The first group is best forgotten, and the second is (naturally) dated; it is in the last group where one can find the occasional gem, the memorable stanza, the well-turned phrase. The most famous of these poems, because of its notoriety, will always (and justifiably) be "Two Loves," with its celebrated closing line: "I am the Love that dare not speak its name." Murray also rediscovers for the reader a few other notable pieces. But, in spite of the handful of contemporaries who touted the "belief that Douglas ranked as a sonneteer with Shakespeare," a few clever lines and outstanding verses does not a master make.

Murray does, however, raise a valid point. As with Douglas's life so with his poetry; the man was his own worst enemy even when it came to his literary reputation. While Douglas was threatening, cajoling, and suing most of his enemies and many of his friends, he also spent three decades inveighing (rather vituperatively) against modernism. Auden, Eliot, Isherwood, Pound, Yeats, H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence--he regarded them all as barbarians at the gates. His taste proved to be obstinately backward-looking, and his outspokenness not only brought into question the relevance of his own verse but also helped to reveal him as a bit of a dinosaur. In many ways, his verse was a hundred years behind the times, but had he been born a century earlier, his meager output still would have been eclipsed by the poetry of Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and even the lesser Romantic poets. Nevertheless, Douglas's life and his poetry are deserving of this valuable and refreshingly lively reassessment.

Having been fascinated since I was very young by the pictures of the slim gilt soul in biographies about Oscar Wilde, I was very pleased to discover Mr Murray's book. It is an amazing achievement for such a young writer, and is pretty much as good as any biography I've read (and I've read a lot). I am slightly younger than the auther, and respect his efforts all the more, regarding his age. Perhaps he wrote this book somewhat prematurely, but it was fascinating all the same.

Regarding the value of this book, one should not dismiss it as a waste of time simply because the main character is objectionable in the eyes of some readers. Bosie may well have been an 'unworthy' character, but not more so than many people through history whose lives have been, and are still being, documented (I will not name names.).

Bosie *is* an important character in a dramatic chapter of history that affected many people. His involvement in the Wilde Trials made him an infamous figure, and brought him to public notice, and then to be dismissed as a villian. From Mr Murray's book I learnt about his love of litigation, and the 'trials' and tribulations of his later life, which amazed me. The book also helped destroy some myths, such as were put about in 'Wilde' for example, especially about his early years. He is no more 'unworthy' than, for example, Diana Mosely, or her sister Unity Mitford. People with an interest in people, or in this period of English history would be well served to read Mr Murray's new biography. I have benefitted from doing so.

This biography is a poorly researched and dishonest apologia for a rather tiresome and spoilt aristocrat whose poetry was as irrelevant and old-fashioned as his "Christian morality". All is explained by the fact that the author is one of his descendants. (Dishonest/poorly researched? Example: the author claims Douglas organised a petition of French writers to defend Wilde and then criticised their hypocrisy for not signing [p. 94]. The petition was in fact organised by Stuart Merrill. See p. 463 of Ellmann's "Oscar Wilde" for the true story.)

'Bosie' paints as rounded a picture of a character known usually for his supporting role in the Oscar Wilde circus as is possible for a subject widely viewed as having little worth beyond his time with his lover and muse. As a first book for so young a writer, Douglas Murray has done us the inestimable favour of elucidating from Lord Alfred Douglas' poetry, letters and other writings the flawed character and lesser talent of someone significantly more interesting than the two-dimensional upper-class arm candy he is frequently portrayed as. Having burnt his first flame in the dazzling candelabra of Wilde's celebrity, Bosie is so often overlooked and dismissed. Murray's thorough research and ample quotation from Bosie's life and works independent of Wilde cannot but help an enquiring reader to a better understanding of their relationship and of the bearing that Bosie's family had on Wilde's fate. This is all the more remarkable for coming from a writer so close in age, and convceivably the outlook of a yet-to-mature individual, to his subject than most other biographers. I look forward eagerly to Douglas Murray's future work.

Bosie is a fascinating look at a character who has been relegated to a minor place in English history. Bosie has always been a mysterious figure -- the Achilles heel of Wilde, and his ultimate downfall. I didn't even realize that Lord Alfred Douglas had talent in his own right nor did I know of his later denunciations of Wilde and homosexuality. It's a well-researched and insightful look into a troubled man.