Two Loves

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.