Lord Alfred Douglas | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Douglas in 1903 (by George Charles Beresford) | |
| Born | Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas 22 October 1870 Powick, Worcestershire, England |
| Died | 20 March 1945 (aged 74) Lancing, Sussex, England |
| Resting place | Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
| Spouse | |
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 Oxford University he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, that carried a homoerotic 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 some intimate notes were found and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married a poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.
On converting to Catholicism in 1911, he repudiated homosexuality, and in a Catholic magazine, Plain English, expressed openly antisemitic views, but rejected the policies of Nazi Germany. He was jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over claims of World War I misconduct. Douglas wrote several books of verse, some in a homoerotic Uranian genre. The phrase "The love that dare not speak its name" appears in one (Two Loves), though it is widely misattributed to Wilde.