Oscar Wilde sentenced to two years hard labour

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Dates

Date of occurrence 1895-05-25

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Cultural Identities

LGBTQ

The Irish writer Oscar Wilde was at the height of his fame, with his most polished play, The Importance of Being Earnest running in London's St James's Theatre, when he became entangled in a series of legal trials that would lead to his imprisonment and fall from public favour. The Marquess of Queensbury (famous for codifying the modern rules of boxing) had a son, Lord Alfred Douglas, who had become Wilde's lover, and encouraged him to dabble in the London underworld of gay prostitution. Queensbury suspected this affair, and blamed Wilde for it, culminating in him leaving a calling card at Wilde's club on 18 February 1895, with the words 'Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite'.

Against his better judgement, Wilde took Queensbury to c…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

198 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Oscar Wilde sentenced to two years hard labour". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 August 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5411, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Oscar Wilde sentenced to two years hard labour

Dates

Places

Cultural Identities

Save this article

Leave Feedback