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.

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 defeat which he humbly denies and ascribes to others in his very generous acknowledgements.

Oscar Wilde was a handsome man in 1892, as the photo of him in this books clearly indicates. He was a brilliant playwright and daubled in poetry. However, as the drawing of his arrest at the Cadogan Hotel on April 13, 1895, he was an arrogant, dandified "gentleman." He had been accused of a horrible charge and should have accepted his fate. To crave justice from libel, he laid himself and his reputation open to scrutiny and disaster.
Why his grandson would want all of this sordidness known now is impossible to comprehend. Some things are better left forgotten or not said. Wilde felt that the charge (however right it might be) called for a defense of justification. It turned out to be the opposite as the self-destructive genius only continued to lie with charm, entertaining the audience but not the court.

Those who start libel actions often emerge with their reputations and lives in tatters. Libel actions are meant to be cases for re-establishing reputations, confounding gossip and allowing the litigant to emerge in a state of unblemished purity (John Mortimer). The most famous libel case of all led Oscar Wilde directly to jail. He left behind a devoted wife and two sons. The grandson who released this detailed account of the trial to try to figure out "Why on earth did you do it?"

There are photographs of some of the persons involved and of the evidence used against him. It is proposed that perhaps he really didn't think he had done anything wrong. After all, many important people of that time got away with the same thing of which he was accussed. To learn what it is, you must read this book.

I'd heard rumors about his sexual persuasion previously, but this stuff went a little too far to please my sensibilities. The Judge maintained that men who could do as he did were 'dead to all sense of shame' and declared that this offence was 'the worst I have ever tried.'

Poor Oscar, his ego got in the way; his pride was too great to accept the fact that he had been 'found out.' In going to court, he laid open his past and destroyed his future. He hurt not only himself but his family as well. Why can't people just let the sordid past lay dormant?