Reading in the Garden

Wonderfully Wilde Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1854.   He was a multi-talented and wildly popular witty writer and lecturer. He wrote everything from fairy tales to poems and plays, as well as one novel, T he Picture of Dorian Gray .   Oscar Wilde was a husband and father of two boys, and he was gay, a well-known secret.   When he was professionally at the top of his game, he had an affair with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas.   Unfortunately, Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, found out and was not too pleased. Alfred’s angry dad left Oscar a nasty little calling card on which he called him a sodomite, though in his outrage he misspelled it as somdomite.   Oscar took offense to the slur and sued the marquis for libel—a life-changing error on his part.   He should have let it go, let it go, or at least known the importance of having a good attorney. During the trial Daddy Douglas’s sneaky lawyer tur...