Hahahaha, I think it is really too long for a pillow (sadly).

So are you. <3

The poem doesn’t scan at all. Or rhyme. But I love it anyway. “Alas, Douglas had the bad character” is my favorite line because of how true it is.

Bosie IS bad. Not through and through, but frequently.

It is very good indeed. But not so much of a biography proper; and neither is my favorite biography, Gary Schmidgall’s The Stranger Wilde. It’s excellent, but it doesn’t do a chronological life of Wilde, more like essays about various things in Wilde’s life. For a straight biography, Ellmann’s the standard, but it drags in spots.

It was indeed Alfred Douglas’s father who persecuted the crap out of Oscar Wilde. But Bosie himself grew up to have many qualities in common with his father, like utter utter selfishness, infidelity, paranoia, raving sexism and antisemitism, a towering ego – I could go on but you get the point. :p

Oh, poor you with your cold! I hope it doesn’t last too long. 🙁 And glad this ridiculous book could make you smile – at least some good came out of it. :p

It’s not necessary to know much about horrible Douglas. This post said the nicest thing I know about him, and one or two nasty things, but trust me, the other stuff about him is nearly all terrible.

Exactly my reaction to the charm thing. Bosie may have been charming (though I bet I wouldn’t have been impressed by it), but I suspect Oscar Wilde was responding at least 50% to aesthetics. :p