The Unofficial Website of
Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas

Chalk and pastel drawing by Sir William Rothenstein
Oxford, 1893


Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, or "Bosie" as he preferred to be called (a nickname gained in childhood), was an accomplished poet, writer, and editor. He is known to many as the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde. However, some of the most well-known people of his day had the highest praise for his poetry and sonnets. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, compiler of The Oxford Book of English Verse, believed that Douglas wrote the finest sonnets of his time, sonnets that few other English poets had ever equaled. Frank Harris also gave him extravagant praise as a sonneteer, comparing him with Shakespeare; and George Bernard Shaw compared him to Shelley. During his lifetime, he published numerous volumes of poetry, a number autobiographical works, and edited several periodicals.






Welcome to the Unofficial Website of
Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas!






AN INTRODUCTION


By Lord Gawain Douglas


My Great-Uncle, Bosie Douglas, is now finally coming into his own and being recognized as the fine poet he truly was. His work had been overshadowed in our time by his fascinating life and the intense media and public interest in the 19th century soap opera of Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry. Actually, his poetry is infinitely more absorbing than these things and will surely outlive them. He was a true original in a contrarian sense, by his refusal to go along with any movement or school of modern poetry. At a time when poets such as Auden and Eliot were breaking radical new ground, Douglas stuck firmly to form and metre and condemned any utterances which lacked these attributes as being total non-poetry. Within his chosen framework of the "Italian" or Petrarchan sonnet, he was a master.

Watch out particularly in these sonnets, for a most unusual use of language and idea and an eerie ability to create a haunted atmosphere with very few words. These poems need to be heard. There is a sonorous, almost elemental quality to some of them which is very powerful indeed. Douglas produced some world-beating lines. Here are a few of them:


"Love that weaves the years on time's slow loom"
- from the sonnet, To Olive


"The hunter's cry wounds the deep darkness"
- from the sonnet, Beauty and the Hunterr


"To clutch life's hair, and thrust one naked phrase
Like a lean knife through the ribs of time"
- from the sonnet, The City of the Soul<


With very best wishes,
Lord Gawain