Douglas, Lord Alfred Bruce

(1870-1945)

   Son of the Marquess of Queensberry, born in Worcestershire and educated at Winchester College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He and Oscar Wilde formed a gay relationship, which led to the famous trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 (see entry). Douglas was the editor of a literary journal, The Academy, from 1907 to 1910. Winston Churchill brought a libel case against Douglas in 1923 because Douglas claimed that Churchill had been part of a conspiracy to kill Lord Kitchener. He was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison. While in prison, he wrote his last major poetic work, "In Excelsis." He became a Roman Catholic in 1911 and died at Lancing, Sussex. Some of his publications: Collected Poems, 1919. The Complete Poems of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1928. The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1931. Sonnets, 1935. Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up, 1940. Some of his poems: "Apologia," "Lighten Our Darkness," "Ode to My Soul," "Rejected," "The City of the Soul," "The Dead Poet," "The Green River," "The Hen," "The Witch," "Two Loves."

   Sources: Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s. Karl Beckson, ed. Academy Chicago Publishers, 1981. "Autobiography" of Lord Alfred Douglas. Reprint Services Corporation, 1994. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Unofficial Website of Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas (http://www.geocities.com/starparty1/bosie). Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).