Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At the University of Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp
| Accessed 26 February 2026. that carried a homoeroticism subtext, and met Wilde, starting a close but stormy relationship. Douglas's father, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but Queensberry produced witnesses who attested to the truth of his claim, and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married the bisexual poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.
After converting to Catholicism in 1911, he repudiated homosexuality, and in a Catholic magazine, Plain English, expressed openly antisemitic views. He was jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over claims of World War I misconduct. Douglas wrote several books of verse, some in a homoerotic Uranians genre. The phrase "The love that dare not speak its name" appears in one (), published in 1894 which is often misattributed to Wilde.
His nickname derived from his mother's habit of calling him "Boysie", a West Country diminutive meaning "little boy", which was eventually shortened to "Bosie." This was a nickname which stuck for the rest of his life. His mother successfully sued for divorce in 1887 on the grounds of his father's adultery."The Queensberry Divorce Case", The Times, 24 January 1887, p. 4. The Marquess later married Ethel Weeden in 1893, but the marriage was annulled the following year.
Douglas was educated at Wixenford School, Winchester College (1884–88) and Magdalen College, Oxford (1889–93), which he left without obtaining a degree. At Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp (1892–93), an activity that intensified the constant conflict between him and his father. Their relationship had always been strained, and during the Queensberry–Wilde feud, Douglas sided with Wilde, even encouraging Wilde to prosecute the Marquess for libel. In 1893, Douglas had a brief affair with George Cecil Ives.
In 1858, his grandfather, Archibald Douglas, 8th Marquess of Queensberry, had died in what was reported as a shooting accident, but was widely believed to have been suicide.Linda Stratmann, The Marquess of Queensberry: Wilde's Nemesis, Yale University Press 2013 p. 25Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, Random House 2011 p. 427. In 1862, his widowed grandmother, Lady Queensberry, converted to Catholic Church and took her children to live in Paris. Lady Florence Dixie at Spartacus-Educational.com (accessed 26 February 2019) One of his uncles, Lord James Douglas, was deeply attached to his twin sister "Florrie" (Lady Florence Douglas) and was heartbroken when she married a baronet, Dixie baronets. In 1885, Lord James tried to abduct a young girl, and after that, he became ever more manic; in 1888, he made a disastrous marriage.Douglas, Murray, Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, Chapter One online at nytimes.com (accessed 8 March 2008). Separated from Florrie, James drank himself into a deep depression, and in 1891 committed suicide by cutting his throat. Another of his uncles, Lord Francis Douglas (1847–1865), had died in a climbing accident on the Matterhorn. His uncle, Lord Archibald Edward Douglas (1850–1938), became a clergyman.G. E. Cokayne et al., eds., The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new edition, 13 volumes in 14 (1910–1959; new edition, 2000), volume X, page 694. Alfred Douglas's aunt, Lord James's twin Lady Florence Dixie (1855–1905), was an author, war correspondent for the Morning Post during the First Boer War, and a feminist. Dixie, Lady Florence, poet, novelist, writer; explorer and a keen champion of Woman's Rights in Who Was Who online at 7345683 at xreferplus.com (subscription required), accessed 11 March 2008. In 1890, she published a novel, Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900, in which women's suffrage is achieved after a woman posing as a man named Hector D'Estrange is elected to the House of Commons. The character D'Estrange is clearly based on Oscar Wilde.Heilmann, Ann, Wilde's New Women: the New Woman on Wilde in Uwe Böker, Dick Corballis, Julie A. Hibbard, The Importance of Reinventing Oscar: Versions of Wilde During the Last 100 Years (Rodopi, 2002) pp. 135–147, in particular p. 139.
Douglas has been described as spoiled, reckless, insolent and extravagant. He would spend money on boys and gambling, expecting Wilde to contribute to funding his tastes. They often argued and broke up, but would usually be reconciled.
Douglas had praised Wilde's play Salome in the Oxford magazine The Spirit Lamp, of which he was editor. Wilde had originally written Salomé in French, and in 1893 he commissioned Douglas to translate it into English. Douglas's French was very poor and his translation was highly criticised; for example, a passage that runs " On ne doit regarder que dans les miroirs" ("One should look only in mirrors") he rendered "One must not look at mirrors". Douglas was angered at Wilde's criticism, and claimed that the errors were in fact in Wilde's original play. This led to a hiatus in the relationship and a row between the two, with angry messages being exchanged and even the involvement of the publisher John Lane and the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley when they themselves objected to the poor standard of Douglas's work. Beardsley complained to Robbie Ross: "For one week the numbers of telegraph and messenger boys who came to the door was simply scandalous". Wilde redid much of the translation himself, but in a gesture of reconciliation suggested that Douglas be dedicated as the translator rather than be credited, along with him, on the title page. Accepting this, Douglas, likened the difference between sharing the title page and having a dedication to "the difference between a tribute of admiration from an artist and a receipt from a tradesman".
In 1894, Douglas came and visited Oscar Wilde in Worthing, to the consternation of the latter's wife Constance.Antony Edmunds, Oscar Wilde's Scandalous Summer; p. 26 [4]
On another occasion, while staying with Wilde in Brighton, Douglas fell ill with influenza and was nursed by Wilde, but failed to return the favour when Wilde himself fell ill having caught influenza in consequence. Instead Douglas moved to the luxurious Grand Hotel and on Wilde's 40th birthday sent him a letter informing him that he had charged Wilde with the hotel bill. Douglas also gave his old clothes to male prostitutes, but failed to remove from the pockets incriminating letters exchanged between him and Wilde, which were then used for blackmail. Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman, published in 1987.
Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, suspected the liaison to be more than a friendship. He sent his son a letter, attacking him for leaving Oxford without a degree and failing to take up a proper career. He threatened to "disown Alfred and stop all money supplies." Alfred responded with a telegram reading: "What a funny little man you are."
Queensberry's next letter threatened his son with a "thrashing" and accused him of being "crazy". He also threatened to "make a public scandal in a way you little dream of" if he continued his relationship with Wilde.
Queensberry was well known for his short temper and threatening to beat people with a horsewhip. Alfred sent his father a postcard stating "I detest you" and making it clear that he would take Wilde's side in a fight between him and the Marquess, "with a loaded revolver".
In answer Queensberry wrote to Alfred (whom he addressed as "You miserable creature") that he had divorced Alfred's mother so as not to "run the risk of bringing more creatures into the world like yourself" and that when Alfred was a baby, "I cried over you the bitterest tears a man ever shed, that I had brought such a creature into the world, and unwittingly committed such a crime.... You must be demented."
Douglas's eldest brother Francis Viscount Drumlanrig died in a suspicious hunting accident in October 1894, as rumours circulated that he had been having a homosexual relationship with the future Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, and that the cause of death was suicide. The Marquess of Queensberry thus embarked on a campaign to save his other son and began a public persecution of Wilde. Wilde had been openly flamboyant and his actions made the public suspicious even before the trial.Ellmann (1988:101) The Marquess and a bodyguard confronted Wilde in Wilde's home; later, Queensberry planned to throw rotten vegetables at Wilde on the first night of The Importance of Being Earnest, but forewarned of this, Wilde was able to deny him access to the theatre.
Queensberry then publicly insulted Wilde by leaving at the latter's club a visiting card on which he had written, "For Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite ". The wording is in dispute – the handwriting is unclear – although Hyde reports it as this. According to Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, it is more likely "Posing somdomite", while Queensberry himself claimed it to be "Posing as somdomite". Holland suggests that this wording ("posing as ...") would have been easier to defend in court.
Queensberry's attorney announced in court that he had located several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. Wilde's lawyers advised him that this would make a conviction on the libel charge very unlikely; he then dropped the libel charge, on his lawyers' advice, to avoid further pointless scandal. Without a conviction, the libel law of the time meant that Wilde was responsible for Queensberry's considerable legal costs which, along with other debts, left him bankruptcy. Based on the evidence raised during the case, Wilde was arrested the next day and charged with committing criminal sodomy and "gross indecency", a crime capable of being committed only by two men, which might include sexual acts other than sodomy.
Douglas's September 1892 poem "" (published in the Oxford magazine The Chameleon in December 1894) was used against Wilde at the latter's trial. It ends with the famous line that refers to male homosexuality as the love that dare not speak its name, which is often attributed wrongly to Wilde. Wilde gave an eloquent but counter-productive explanation of the nature of this love on the witness stand. The trial resulted in a hung jury.
In 1895, when Wilde was released on bail during his trials, Douglas's cousin Sholto Johnstone Douglas stood surety for pound sterling500 of the bail money.Maureen Borland, Wilde's Devoted Friend: A Life of Robert Ross, 1869–1918 (Lennard Publishing, 1990) p. 206 at books.google.com, accessed 22 January 2009. The prosecutor opted to retry the case. Wilde was convicted on 25 May 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour, first at Pentonville, then Wandsworth, then famously in Reading Gaol. Douglas was forced into exile in Europe.
While in prison, Wilde wrote Douglas a long and critical letter titled De Profundis, describing how he felt about him. Wilde was not permitted to send it but it might have been sent to Douglas after Wilde's release. It was given to Robbie Ross with instructions to make a copy and send the original to Douglas. Douglas later said that he received only a letter from Ross with a few choice quotations and did not know there was a letter from Wilde until reference was made to it in a biography of Wilde on which Ross had consulted. After Wilde's release on 19 May 1897, the two reunited in August at Rouen but stayed together only a few months due to personal differences and various pressures on them.
The marriage grew stormy after Douglas became a Catholic in 1911. They separated in 1913, lived together for a time in the 1920s after Custance also converted, and then lived apart after she gave up her Catholicism. The health of their only child further strained the marriage, which by the end of the 1920s was all but over, although they never divorced.
Douglas also contributed to Billing's journal Vigilante as part of his campaign against Robbie Ross. He had written a poem calling Margot Asquith one "bound with Lesbian fillets", while her husband Prime Minister Herbert Asquith gave Ross money.Philip Hoare. (1999). Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century. Arcade Publishing, p. 110. During the trial he described Wilde as "the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last three hundred and fifty years", adding that he intensely regretted having met Wilde and helped him with the French translation of Salome, which he called "a most pernicious and abominable piece of work".
From August 1920 (issue No 8) Plain English began publishing a long series of articles called "The Jewish Peril" by Major-General Count Cherep-Spiridovitch, whose title was taken from the fore-title of George Shanks's version of a fraudulent work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Plain English advertised from issue 20 The Britons' second edition of Shank's version of the Protocols. Douglas challenged the Jewish Guardian, published by the League of British Jews, to take him to court, suggesting they refrained from doing so because they were "well aware of the absolute truth of the allegations which we have made."The "Jewish Guardian" Again, Plain English No 21, 27 November 1920 The magazine suggested in 1921, "We need a Ku Klux Klan in this country,"Lies, Plain English No 66, 8 October 1921 but a promotion for Ostara magazine was generally not well received by readers.
Other regular targets of the magazine included David Lloyd George, Lord Northcliffe, H. G. Wells, Frank Harris, and Sinn Féin. In December 1920 the magazine was the first to publish the secret constitution of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
From 25 December 1920 it began publishing notorious articles alleging that a "powerful individual in the Admiralty" had alerted the Germans at the Battle of Jutland that the British had broken their code, and that Winston Churchill had falsified a report in return for a large sum of money from Ernest Cassel, who thereby profited. In May 1921 Douglas insinuated that Lord Kitchener had been murdered by Jews.
Douglas ceased to be editor after issue 67 in 1921, after a row with Spencer.Toczek, p. 34, He then produced a short-lived, almost identical rival called Plain Speech in 1921 with Herbert Moore Pim. Its first issue contained a letter from a correspondent in Germany praising "Adolf Hitler" (so spelt) and "Nazi Party".
In 1920 he adhered to the idea of "the Jewish Peril", but noted, "Christian Charity forbids us to join in wholesale and indiscriminate abuse and vilification of an entire race."Christian Charity and the Jews, Plain English No. 4, 31 July 1920, p. 78. In 1921 he declared it was not acceptable to "shift responsibility" onto the Jews."The Jews, 'The Britons' and the Morning Post", Plain Speech No. 10, 24 December 1921, p. 149. In his 1929 Autobiography he wrote, "I feel now that it is ridiculous to make accusations against the Jews, attributing them qualities and methods which are really much more typically English than Jewish," and then indicated the country had only itself to blame if the Jews came in and trampled on it. The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1929) pp. 303–304.
The historian Colin Holmes argued that while "Douglas had been to the forefront of anti-semitism in the early 1920s, he was quite unable to come to terms with the vicious racist anti-semitism in Germany" under the Nazis.Colin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876–1939 Routledge (1979) p. 218. Politically Douglas described himself as "a strong Conservative of the 'Diehard' variety".The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1929) p. 220.
Douglas was plaintiff or defendant in several trials for civil or criminal libel. In 1913 he was charged with libelling his father-in-law. That same year he accused Arthur Ransome of libelling him in his book Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study. He saw the trial as a weapon against his enemy Ross, not understanding that Ross would not be called to give evidence. The court found in Ransome's favour and Douglas was bankrupted by the failed libel suit. The Edinburgh Gazette Publication date:17 January 1913 Issue: 12530, Page 77. Ransome removed the offending passages from the second edition.Ransome, Arthur, Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study, 2nd ed., Methuen, 1913.
The prime case was brought by the Crown on Winston Churchill's behalf in 1923. Douglas was found guilty of libelling Churchill and sentenced to six months in prison. Churchill had been accused as cabinet minister of falsifying an official report on the Battle of Jutland in 1916, when although suffering losses, the Royal Navy drove the German battle fleet off the high seas. Churchill was said to have reported that the British Navy had in fact been defeated, the supposed motive being that when the news was flashed, British security prices would tumble on the world's stock exchanges, allowing a group of named Jewish financiers to snap them up cheaply; Churchill's alleged reward was a houseful of furniture valued at Pound sterling40,000. The allegations were made by Douglas in Plain English and later at a public meeting in London. A false report of a crushing British naval defeat had indeed been planted in the New York press by German interests, but by this time (after the failure of his Dardanelles Campaign) Churchill was unconnected with the Admiralty. As the attorney general noted in court on Churchill's behalf, there was "no plot, no phoney communiqué, no stock market raid and no present of fine furniture". accessed 10/2/2017. accessed 10/2/2017.
In 1924, while in prison, Douglas echoed Wilde's composition of De Profundis (From the Depths) during his incarceration and wrote his last major poetic work, In Excelsis (In the Highest) in 17 . Since the prison authorities would not allow Douglas to take the manuscript with him on his release, he had to rewrite the work from memory. Douglas maintained that his health never recovered from his harsh prison ordeal, which included sleeping on a plank bed without a mattress.
Throughout the 1930s and up to his death, Douglas kept up correspondence with many people, including Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw. Anthony Wynn based his play Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship on the letters between Shaw and Douglas. One of Douglas's final public appearances was a well-received lecture to the Royal Society of Literature on 2 September 1943 on The Principles of Poetry, published in an edition of 1,000 copies. He attacked the poetry of T. S. Eliot; the talk was praised by Arthur Quiller-Couch and Augustus John.Murray pp. 318–319.
Harold Nicolson described his impression of Douglas after meeting him at a lunch party in 1936:
Douglas's only child, Raymond, was diagnosed in 1927, at the age of 24, with schizoaffective disorder and entered St Andrew's Hospital, a mental institution. Though decertified and discharged after five years, he suffered another breakdown and returned to the hospital. In February 1944, when his mother died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 70, Raymond was able to attend her funeral, and in June he was again decertified. His conduct rapidly deteriorated, and in November he again returned to St Andrew's, where he stayed until his death on 10 October 1964. "Timeline to the Life of Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas" anthonywynn.com Retrieved 24 August 2011.
The elderly Douglas, living a reduced life in Hove in the 1940s, appears in the diaries of Henry Channon and in the first autobiography of Donald Sinden, whose son Marc Sinden claimed his father was one of only two people at the funeral.Libby Purvis interviews Freddie Fox. The Times, 17 January 2013, p. 8. In fact the funeral report in The Times named some 20 mourners, including Sinden, with "other friends"."Funeral: Lord Alfred Douglas", The Times, 24 March 1945, p. 7. He died at the home of Edward and Sheila Colman, who were the main beneficiaries in his will, inheriting the copyright to his work. A. N. Wilson in The Telegraph 26 November 2001
Douglas edited The Academy from 1907 to 1910, during which time he had an affair with the artist Romaine Brooks, who was also bisexual. The main love of her life, Natalie Clifford Barney, also had an affair with Wilde's niece Dorothy Wilde and even, in 1901, with Douglas's future wife Olive Custance, the year before the couple married.
Of the six biographies of Douglas, the earlier ones by Braybrooke and Freeman were forbidden to quote from his copyright work, while De Profundis was unpublished. Later biographies were by Rupert Croft-Cooke, H. Montgomery Hyde (who also wrote about Wilde), Douglas Murray (who called Braybrooke's biography "a rehash and exaggeration of Douglas's book" his). The most recent is Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work by Caspar Wintermans in 2007.
In 1999, The University of Oxford established the Lord Alfred Douglas Memorial Prize for "...the best sonnet or other poem written in English and in strict rhyming metre." The award was established by Douglas's friend Sheila Colman, who, on her death, left a legacy of $36,000 to fund the award.
In the BBC drama Oscar (1985) he was portrayed by Robin McCallum (credited as Robin McCallum); Michael Gambon played Wilde.
The queer history podcast Bad Gays covered Douglas in Episode 2 of their first season.
Relationship with Wilde
1895 trials
Italy and Paris
Marriage
Repudiation of Wilde
Plain English
Libel actions
Later life
Death
Writings
Poetry
Non-fiction
In popular culture
Notes
External links
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