The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of The Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry), 1895 (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "On Saturday 2 March, at nine o'clock in the morning, the Marquess of Queensberry was arrested at Carter's Hotel on a warrant which Oscar Wilde..." (more)
Key Phrases: name upon the title page, other libels, beautiful personality, Lord Queensberry, John Douglas, Lord Alfred Douglas (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1895, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor for "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons." Wilde's story became a cautionary tale for homosexuals in Victorian England; in the century since, he has come to be celebrated as a martyr of the gay struggle for recognition. This volume, with an introduction and commentary by Wilde's grandson, Holland, publishes for the first time the unabridged transcript of the first of the three infamous trials that resulted in Wilde's destruction. The irony, as Holland's introduction makes abundantly clear, is that Wilde courted his imprisonment, suing his inamorata's father, the Marquess Queensberry, John Douglass, for libel when Queensberry left a card for him at the Albemarle Club that read, "For Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite." Wilde might have been best served by tearing up the card and forgetting it; instead, he pressed charges. But Wilde's riskiest step was treating the witness stand as a theatrical stage. When a prosecutor asked him if he had kissed a certain young man, Wilde joked, "Oh no, never in my life. He was a peculiarly plain boy." With that one flippant comment, Holland's text suggests, the die was cast. But the transcript and Holland's judicious notes also reveal how ill-served Wilde was by his counsel. Some of the same letters that were later used to convict Wilde were introduced by his own lawyers in this first trial as evidence. The general reader might find a work that condenses all three trial transcripts into one narrative, such as Moises Kaufman's stage adaptation, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, more accessible, but this volume is invaluable for the Wilde enthusiast, the legal scholar, the champion of human rights and the student of English literature.
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Review

"A fascinating document for anyone interested in the law or literature…as compelling as a Shakespearean tragedy." -- Legal Times

"A gripping and fascinating volume [that]...ranks with the Apology, Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates." -- Daily Telegraph (London)

"An essential for aficionados...at times it is easy to forget that this is not one of Wilde’s own playscripts." -- The Observer

"Inordinately gripping." -- New York Times

"Invaluable for the Wilde enthusiast, the legal scholar, the champion of human rights, and the student of English literature." -- Publishers Weekly

"Marvellous … a feast." -- The Independent on The Wilde Album

"Sharp, unillusioned and free from family piety." -- Daily Telegraph (London) on The Wilde Album

"The author has a wry lucid style that moves along briskly...an excellent little book." -- Sunday Boston Globe on The Wilde Album

"This narrative remind[s] us what an extraordinary man his grandfather was—and how much he influenced the 20th century." -- New York Times Book Review on The Wilde Album

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Fourth Estate; 1 edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007156642
• ISBN-13: 978-0007156641
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #649,027 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Genuine Tragedy, December 9, 2003

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It wasn't a capital trial, but the 1895 libel proceedings of Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry were in their way tragic and terrible. Entering the trial, Wilde was a celebrity and a playwright with the magnificently silly _The Importance of Being Ernest_ in successful performance in London and New York. Afterwards, he was pursued, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at hard labor for the then crime of homosexuality. It is a story that has been told many times and turned into dramas. Those of us who love Wilde's writing and outrageous wit will always wonder what would have happened if he had been able to write and live as he wished, instead of being ruined and sent to an early death. Amazingly, the trial record has until now been unavailable. There were summaries, and publication of extracts, but only with _The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of the Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry)_, 1895 (Fourth Estate) do we have a full record. In 2000, an anonymous source donated a transcript of the trial to the British Library. It was authenticated, and has now been edited by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson. Anyone interested in Wilde's life and writing will be fascinated by this verbatim record which puts judge, prosecutor, defender, and of course Wilde himself on the stage of the Old Bailey to play out their roles verbatim.

Holland has a useful introduction to recall the details of how Wilde was snared into legal doom, spurred by his young man Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") to bother Bosie's abominable father Queensberry. When, after several skirmishes, Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, with the words "To Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite" (spelling was one of the Marquess's shortcomings), Wilde should have thrown it into the fire. Instead, egged on by Bosie, he took Queensberry to court for libel. It was the mistake of his life.; as Holland writes, "If I could ask my grandfather a single question, it would have to be, 'Why on earth did you do it?'" Wilde did not take advice that he leave the country, and so sealed his own doom. Most of the pages of this book are the words from the trial, and most of those words come from the bouts with Wilde in the witness box. Initially he seemed to enjoy his role in the events, and gave as good as he got. For much of the repartee reported here, the transcriber notes: "(_laughter_.)" and "(_more laughter_.)" But an eventual flippant answer overthrew Wilde on the stand, although his case could not have been won. When Carson asked about a companion, "Did you ever kiss him?" Wilde replied, "Oh, no, never in my life; he was a peculiarly plain boy." It was not long after that Wilde and his lawyers withdrew the charges, and Queensberry was declared not guilty.

If Queensbury was not guilty of libel, it was reasonable to think that his accusations were truthful, and with the evidence already gathered, Queensberry assisted in a speedy arrest of Wilde, who once again had refused advice that he leave the country. The subsequent trials, one with a hung jury and one finding him guilty of gross indecency, are not covered in this volume. Wilde had two years of hard labor, and three sad years of exile before his death in Paris in 1900. He produced the mordant "Ballad of Reading Gaol" but little else during these years, and while there are plenty of examples that his wit remained in conversation, we were robbed of subsequent examples of the delicious laughter that had come from each of his successively improving plays. This is a useful book as full documentation of the first trial, and Holland has given helpful notes throughout. Those who admire Wilde, however, will find it more than useful. Wilde was brilliant at Greek and admired Greek drama and life, and it is no exaggeration that the transcript of the trial, reading as it does like a piece of period theater, has all the marks of a classic tragedy.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing reading experience, April 13, 2004

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

What's amazing is that, we have heard for many years about the unparalleled wit and charm of Wilde in conversation, yet until now we of course have been denied this experience. Reading these verbatim transcripts, hundreds of pages long and recently unearthed, we are given the opportunity to do this almost virtually, for the Wildean voice comes through loud and clear, with perfect crispness and distinction. This libel trial, the first of three of the Oscar Wilde trials, is almost a conversation between two persons, and the defence counsel, Carson, though incredibly scornful and insolent, is almost as intelligent and quite as good at debate as Wilde, so it's a splendid match of brains. The outcome is disheartening, though, and throughout you can't help pounding the desk and murmuring out loud, oh, Oscar, how could you have been so stupid! Or -- don't go there! So he becomes real in a way he hasn't previously, not even in the best biographies available. Queensberry and Alfred Douglas come off, in hindsight, as monsters of privilege in only quasi-human form. And poor Edward Shelley, it is plain, deserves a book of his own.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YES, BOSIE INDEED IS THE VILLIAN IN ALL OF THIS, November 29, 2007

By	C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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As this book makes abundantly clear, Alfred Douglas is to blame. Al wanted to get back at his unstable and angry father through Wilde. Alfred forced his lap dog Wilde to ignore everyone else's advice and pursue a criminal charge against his father the Marquess of Queensbury.

THe MArquess at that time had come through a vicious divorce trial, and suffered the suicide of an older son who was being blackmailed for intimate relations over many years with the new Prime Minister. The Marquess reacted unwisely in forbidding any friendship between Al and Oscar, and in moving not only to throw vegetables upon the stage on the opening night of The Importance, but also leaving a slanderous if somewhat illegible card at Oscar's club.

Oscar lived to regret that owing to his extravagance in setting up Al and Al's intimate pal in an expensive hotel, he could not pay the hotel bill and thus leave for a planned trip to Paris to practice Salome. Instead he remained in London and received the unfortunate card. His most trusted legal friend had already been retained by the Marquess and thus could not give Oscar the good advice he needed to ignore the card and discard it. Instead he followed Al's insistence in charging Al's father the Marquess, and the rest in the tight knit British aristocracy and ruling class, as flamboyantly revealed in Oscar's plays, was inexorable and inevitable. IN fact Oscar's trials become his finest performance and most indeniable proof of the utter and unmentionable corruption, vice, immorality and hypocrisy of the BRitish ruling class. But what a profound and absolute price he paid for revealing this.

This nevertheless was his life's mission. The son of Irish Catholic nationailsts, he was raised in Protestant Schools, including Trinity in Dublin where he was classmate to the one who would so cruelly cross-examine as recorded here. He then went on to Oxford, and London, serving subversively and amazing his fake friends. He perhaps believed he could dazzle the British courts but was quickly silenced, and the events must speak clearly for themselves. As for the British system of injustice, as BRitish Barrister and author of the Rumpole series John Mortimer displays in his brilliant foreword to this book, res ipse loquitur. Mortimer concludes: " . . .when any merciful prosecutor or Home Secretary might have decied that he had suffered enough, it let him down badly and he was finally convicted. Passing the ridiculous sentence of two years' hard labour, Mr. Justice WIlls said that men who could do as Oscar WIlde did were 'dead to all sense of shame.' This judge, who had presided over cases of rape and murder, seriously maintained that Wilde's offense was 'the worst I have ever tried.' When the verdict and sentence were announced ( . . .) the truth had been exposed but it was still a shameful day for British Justice (p. xiii)."

Needless to say that prosecutor who had so viciously treated Wilde despite their co-nationality went on to a highly successful legal career. Reading these transcripts reveal how gifted a barrister he was and how very poorly served was Mr. Wilde in this absolute diversion of the interests of justice, in which Wilde could bring a libel case against a member of the British aristocracy and wind up in prison himself, doing hard labour and losing everythnig he had including his beloved wife and sons.

This nevertheless stands as Mr. Wilde's greatest revelation of British corruption, which Anglo America now eagerly imitates, and thus which we must now read as a cautionary tale with great attention.

And we must deeply thank and congratulate Wilde's grandson in researching in a keenly academic manner this book from forgotten and hidden court documents and associated texts, and in writing the brilliant introduction and notes, a scholarly feat which he humbly denies and ascribes to others in his very generous acknowledgements.

Please note the Bitish edition of this book irrelevantly includes in the title Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess; do not buy needlessly twice unless a fervent collector of all things Wilde, which is emminently understandable and as matter of course forgiveable. Nevertheless, in light of Mr. Wilde's Irish nationalist parentage, and his central image in Salome, and in citing his own description of the Marquess of Queensberry this superfluous title makes itself sweet icing upon a bitter cake.