Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 - 20 March 1945), nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet, translator, and political commentator, better known as the friend and lover of Oscar Wilde.
The character D\'Estrange is clearly based on Oscar Wilde....... 10] In 1890, she published a novel, Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900, in which women\'s suffrage is achieved after a woman posing as a man named Hector D\'Estrange is elected to the House of Commons.
His uncle Lord Archibald Edward Douglas (1850-1938), on the other hand, became a clergyman.
Alfred Douglas\'s aunt, Lord James\'s twin Lady Florence Douglas (1855-1905), was an author, war correspondent for the Morning Post during the First Boer War, and a feminist.
Another of his uncles, Lord Francis Douglas (1847-1865) had died in a climbing accident on the Matterhorn.
Separated from Florrie, James drank himself into a deep depression, and in 1891 committed suicide by cutting his throat.
In 1888, Lord James married, but this proved disastrous.
In 1885, he tried to abduct a young girl, and after that became ever more manic.
One of his uncles, Lord James Douglas, was deeply attached to his twin sister "Florrie" (Lady Florence Douglas) and was heartbroken when she married.
In 1862, his widowed grandmother, Lady Queensberry, converted to Roman Catholicism and took her children to live in Paris.
In 1858, before Douglas\'s birth, his grandfather, the 8th Marquess of Queensberry, had died in what was reported as a shooting accident, but was widely believed to have been suicide.
In 1893, Douglas had a brief affair with George Ives.
Their relationship had always been a strained one and during the Queensberry-Wilde feud, Douglas sided with Wilde, even encouraging Wilde to prosecute the Marquess for libel.
At Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp (1892-3), an activity that intensified the constant conflict between him and his father.
Douglas was educated at Wixenford School, Winchester College (1884-88) and Magdalen College, Oxford (1889-93), which he left without obtaining a degree.
His mother successfully sued for divorce in 1887 on the grounds of his father\'s adultery.
The Marquess married Ethel Weeden in 1893 but the marriage was annulled the following year.
He was his mother\'s favourite child; she called him Bosie (a derivative of "boysie", as in boy), a nickname which stuck for the rest of his life.
Early life and background: Douglas was born at Ham Hill House in Powick, Worcestershire, the third son of John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry and his first wife Sibyl Montgomery.
Politically he would describe himself as "a strong Conservative of the \'Diehard\' variety".
Much of his early poetry was Uranian in theme, though he tended, later in life, to distance himself from both Wilde\'s influence and his own role as a Uranian poet.
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 - 20 March 1945), nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet, translator, and political commentator, better known as the friend and lover of Oscar Wilde
