Two Loves

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas

Ed. Simon Mulder

Poetry, Prose, Court Records, Letters

52 p.

Limited edition, letterpress printed, hand bound original cover art by Nick Morley

Publication: October 2026

£16.99

This anthology illuminates one of the most compelling love stories in literary history: the turbulent romance between the playwright and aesthete Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and his young lover, the poet Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945), nicknamed ‘Bosie’. Between 1891 and Wilde’s untimely death, they formed the most scandalous couple amidst a hypocritical Victorian society. To the world, they were infamous; to each other, they were alternately indispensable and irreconcilable. Yet, they inspired each other to some of their best work.

Structured chronologically, this concise edition follows the passion and quarrels of Wilde’s golden years and his downfall. Through letters and court records, it charts the fateful intervention of Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, and reveals how the lovers’ own private correspondence and scandalous poems were weaponized against them in court, leading to Wilde’s tragic conviction for ‘gross indecency’ and his searing prison letter De Profundis. The anthology further captures Wilde’s post-prison reunion with Douglas – which led Wilde to finish his masterpiece The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Douglas to write his acclaimed sonnet cycle The City of the Soul – and concludes with the haunting elegies Douglas wrote after Wilde’s death in Paris.

Simon Mulder (1986) lives in Amsterdam. He studied comparative historical linguistics at Leiden University, and philosophy and classical languages at the University of Amsterdam. Having taught Greek and Latin in secondary education alongside his early literary pursuits, he has since transitioned to working in the literary field as a poet, essayist, and performer. As a translator, he made his debut with Volmaakt moment / L’Heure Exquise, a bilingual French-Dutch anthology of the poetry of Paul Verlaine. Additionally, he has compiled several anthologies of the work of Dutch poets. He is the founder and artistic director of literary and musical stage collective Feast of Poetry (Feest der Poëzie). In this capacity and as a performer, Mulder has performed in Belgium, England, France, Portugal, Russia, and Japan. He also serves as the chair of the Louis Couperus Society, which promotes the legacy of the celebrated Dutch writer.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish writer and aesthete who read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalen College, Oxford, before becoming a leading figure in London arts and society. His brilliant, witty plays and his scandalous a airs made him one of the most celebrated yet controversial fi gures of the late Victorian era. Following his devastating two-year sentence to hard labour for ‘gross indecency’, his health and finances were ruined. He spent his final years in exile, dying in poverty in Paris.

Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945), nicknamed ‘Bosie’, was a poet, translator, and journalist. Born into an ancient Scottish aristocratic family, he studied at Oxford, where he became Wilde’s muse and lover, a relationship fiercely opposed by his father, the Marquess of Queensberry. Following Wilde’s death, Douglas’s life took a radically different turn: he married, converted to Catholicism, and bitterly renounced his homosexual past. After decades of bitter litigation and libel cases against former friends, he grew milder in his final years, dying largely forgotten by the literary establishment.

Two Loves

The New Menard Press