Wilde (Oscar). Crosland (T.W.H.), Sonnets, first edition, as...

Hammer

£160

Wilde (Oscar). Crosland (T.W.H.), Sonnets, first edition, association copy inscribed and autographed by Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, sometime lover of Oscar Wilde, London: John Richmond Limited, 1912, half-title, black-ruled title, pp: 28, [1], split, original publisher's papered boards, perished spine, worn and faded, 8vo

Provenance: Clonmell/from/Alfred Douglas/Christmas 1912, half-title with ink MS inscription; ?Rupert Scott, 7th Earl of Clonmell (1877-1928)

After the trials Wilde v. Queensberry (1895) and Regina v. Wilde (1895), Crosland, the author of these sonnets, united with Douglas, their association developing into friendship, and together they eventually persecuted Robbie Ross in the civil courts in a variety of actions. They also repeatedly wrote and visited the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions, trying to ensure Ross's arrest for homosexual offences. In 1914, Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde's literary executor and rival for Wilde's affection, charged Crosland with criminal libel, plus writs for criminal conspiracy and perjury against Douglas and Crosland jointly. Crosland was found not guilty, though the judge did say that acquittal would not imply that Ross was guilty of any offence.

By 1912, more than a decade after Wilde's death, the year he presented this volume as a Christmas gift, already having converted to Roman-Catholicism, Douglas began to repudiate Wilde and condemn his homosexuality, in part aggravated by the release of suppressed portions of Wilde's De Profundis. Douglas's revulsion at his own former life would manifest itself in the right-wing, Catholic, and occasionally anti-Semitic, weekly magazine Plain English that he and Crosland would later found in 1920.