Autobiography: Oscar Wilde and Myself

Overview
Oscar Wilde and Myself is Lord Alfred Douglas's intimate, often combative account of his relationship with Oscar Wilde and the public catastrophe that engulfed both men. Written decades after the events it describes, the narrative combines affectionate reminiscence, personal vindication, and bitter recrimination. The memoir seeks both to memorialize Wilde's brilliance and to explain, sometimes to justify, Douglas's own role in a scandal that reshaped Victorian literary life.

Relationship with Wilde
Douglas presents the relationship as one of intense emotional devotion mixed with recurrent conflict. He recalls moments of tenderness, wit, and shared aesthetic affinity, portraying Wilde as a dazzling conversationalist and a singular artistic presence whose personality could lift or destabilize those around him. Alongside admiration, the narrative admits to tensions: jealousies, misunderstandings, and the strain that a secret, socially forbidden liaison placed on both men's lives.

The Trials and Public Calamity
A central portion of the memoir revisits the sequence of events that led to Wilde's prosecution and conviction for gross indecency. Douglas describes the clash with the Marquess of Queensberry, the failed libel action, and the ensuing criminal trials with vivid recollection and moral urgency. He paints the legal campaign as a mixture of malicious calculation by opponents and catastrophic misjudgment by lovers and friends, emphasizing the humiliation and devastation Wilde endured as a public spectacle.

Life After Prison
Douglas follows Wilde into exile and decline, conveying a sorrowful portrait of a once-splendid artist reduced by imprisonment and disgrace. He attends to small domestic details and long nocturnal conversations that reveal both Wilde's continuing intellectual vigor and the pallor of his shattered prospects. The memoir also traces Douglas's own post-trial trajectory, resentful, defensive, and ever engaged in efforts to defend memory, reputation, and what he saw as the purity of their affection.

Voice, Bias, and Evidence
The tone of the narrative is elegiac yet polemical: affectionate portraits of Wilde sit beside sharp accusations against enemies and occasional self-justification. Douglas's loyalty maddeningly mingles with self-exculpation; he seeks to both honor Wilde's genius and absolve himself from the charge of recklessness. The book contains valuable firsthand detail, dialogues, letters, and particular scenes, while also reflecting the author's selective memory and personal grievances, which shape the account as much as factual chronology.

Literary and Historical Value
Beyond memoir, the work contributes to the cultural memory of Wilde by humanizing a figure too often reduced to scandal. It illuminates the private dynamics that underlay public events and supplies texture to the personalities involved. While readers must weigh Douglas's partiality and occasional inaccuracies, the narrative remains an important primary source for understanding the emotional landscape of the Wilde affair and the ways personal passion collided with Victorian law and morality.

Enduring Impression
The overriding impression is of a complicated, heartfelt testament: a lover's portrait of a genius, an apologia for choices that had catastrophic consequences, and a lament for a social order that punished nonconformity so ruthlessly. Douglas's prose is at times lyrical, at times bitterly defensive, but always engaged; the memoir invites sympathy for Wilde while challenging readers to consider responsibility, loyalty, and the cost of living openly against overwhelming social condemnation.