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

Rating:
Summary: A Bad Reputation Finally Redeemed
Review: 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".

Rating:
Summary: Not quite.....
Review: Elsewhere this book has been highly praised mostly as the "promising" work of an Oxford undergraduate. Mr. Murray is able at his craft. As yet his writing does not evidence measurable insight or individual style. This is a flat, charmless work desperately trying to make much about a humorless, disagreeable, quite dispensable dead person. I haven't read a book with so much bad poetry quoted or so earnest in trying to make it seem good. And it certainly goes on too long...... after Robbie Ross' death there is no more interest in Douglas. The book does continue showing how brutish the English could be at the time, notwithstanding noble exceptions such as the Asquiths, Wilde's children and, for that matter, Percy Douglas.

I get the impression that the research for this book was shallow. Certain matters which are significant to the story were glossed over or ignored. For example, reading this book, one would not know that there had been friendship and camaraderie, if

not shared lechery, between Douglas and Robbie Ross (by all accounts a real gentleman, with a known and tolerated preference for young men, and the subject of a recent, much more interesting and thorough biography by Jonathan Fryer). Considering the breadth, depth and consequences of the pathological antipathy Douglas developed for Ross after Wilde's death, particularly after the various De Profundis controversies, it is bewildering that not much was written here about their prior relationship. If Mr. Murray wants to become a biographer he should sense that though not all holes can be filled in a "popular " - type biography, some ought not to be left void. If he wants to become a writer, he needs to learn that antipodes develop drama.

Rating:
Summary: And suddenly the love that wouldn't shut up
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Biography At Its Best
Review: I was stunned by the quality of Mr. Murray's writing.

Mr. Murray enables the reader to feel as if he knows Bosie, understands Bosie, and has been a witness to Bosie's life himself. Bosie's life as well as his relationship with Oscar is so well written that the reader understands the spirit and tone of the life and the relationship. Very well done !!!

Rating:
Summary: Rescuing this underappreciated and maligned man
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book
Review: Mr. Murray has provided us with a good introduction to the life of Lord Douglas, and has produced a solid first work. The writing is dry and at times the research seems a little shallow, but Murray does exhibit potential. I look forward to his next book. My primary complaint is that in addition to a biography of Lord Douglas, Mr. Murray spends too much ink discussing Douglas' poetry. I find the work of Douglas to be that of a bored aristocrat with too much time on his hands. In my years of reading, and reading about, poetry I find very little about Douglas' poetry. Murray should have spent less time on what seems to be a defense of Douglas as a literary figure. Lord Douglas was much more interesting as a personality than as a poet.

Rating:
Summary: More than Oscar's Lover!
Review: Reading some of the reviews listed I was compelled to remind potential readers that though Douglas Murray is just out of his teens he writes with poise of someone twice his age.Boise was a complex man that warrents a biography. Was he a great poet? I am not sure he was but, he was colorful in any reguard. I always wanted to know more about him. I have seen plays and movies based on the Wilde trials but, never felt the stories did justice to Douglas.I am glad I read this book and feel that I have a greater understanding of this mostly undesirable person.

Rating:
Summary: Well done, Mr Murray
Review: 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.)

Rating:
Summary: Bosie's lifelong romance
Review: This is a fascinating freshman outing from Douglas Murray and an in-depth examination of the figure at the heart of Oscar Wilde�s fall from grace in England at the end of the 19th century. The photos are illuminating, and the text is authoritative. Everybody knows the story of Bosie and Wilde, and most are aware that Lord Alfred was the offspring of the litigious aristocrat who gave boxing its Marquis of Queensbury rules. That these two daffy nobs should have combined to bring down one of the brightest bulbs in the Empire is one of literature�s great tragedies. If I have a complaint about the text, it is simply that Murray appears to have convinced himself that Bosie was a great poet and sonneteer, whereas he was actually nothing of the sort. His poetry is, typically, labored and often syntactically suspect. He had a few inspired moments during his association with Wilde, and these resulted in the production of a handful of modestly successful works, including his most famous, �Two Loves,� with the line about �the love that dare not speak its name.� Otherwise, Bosie dropped out of the limelight in the wake of Wilde�s death, only to surface occasionally throughout the first half of the 20th Century, when his name was attached to various court actions for libel, culminating in his being sentenced to jail for six months in the �20s. It all makes for a fascinating study in self-flagellation. Douglas may have been a footnote character, but sometimes the footnotes are needed to illuminate the primary text. In this case, it is his relationship to Wilde that guarantees his footnote status and which, for better or worse, defined his life for the forty-five years he survived his better half.

Rating:
Summary: A good biography, but not the best
Review: While Douglas Murray had access to Douglas family materials heretofore unavailable, he of course did not have access to Bosie Douglas himself. But another, now deceased scholar of all things Wildean, Rupert Croft Cooke, did. Cooke, author of dozens of novels, biographies and other books, knew Lord Alfred Douglas when he, Cooke, was a youngster. As a result, his book, entitled Bosie: Lord Alfred Douglas, His Friends and Enemies, gives an intimate look at Bosie in more mellow old age. Cooke, a former newspaperman in the glory days of Fleet Street, was also a much more lively writer than Douglas Murray. His book is out of print, but can commonly be found in used book shops.