The British Library are symbolically reinstating the reader card of renowned Irish poet, playwright, and author, Oscar Wilde. 130 years on, the reader card of the iconic gay writer will be reinstated after the original was cancelled by the library’s trustees due to his conviction for gross indecency.
Wilde was sentence to two years imprisonment with hard labour for homosexuality from 1895 to 1897. During this time, homosexuality was a crime of ‘gross indecency’ under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.
The decision to revoke the pass is recorded in board minutes in 1895: “The Trustees directed that Mr Oscar Wilde, admitted as a reader in 1879 and sentenced at the Central Criminal Court on 25th May to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour, be excluded from future use of the Museum’s Reading Room.”
Wilde’s sentence came after his decision to sue Lord Queensberry for defamation after Queensberry accused him of being a “sodomite” upon the discovery that his son, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas was Wilde’s Lover.
During his trial, Wilde said: “The Love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the “Love that dare not speak its name,” and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.”
A contemporary pass, bearing Oscar Wilde’s name will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October.
Holland is an expert on his grandfather’s work, and has published – alongside Rupert Hart-Davis – The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. The book gives a timeline of Wilde’s life and includes some of his drawings as well as his famous letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as De Profundis; written during his imprisonment.
When asked how his grandfather might have reacted to the pass being reinstated, Holland said: “He’d probably say ‘about time too’.”
He added: “Oscar had been in Pentonville prison for three weeks when his [pass] to the British Museum Reading Room [now the British Library] was cancelled, so he wouldn’t have known about it, which was probably as well … It would have just added to his misery to feel that one of the world’s great libraries had banned him from books just as the law had banned him from daily life. But the restitution of his ticket is a lovely gesture of forgiveness and I’m sure his spirit will be touched.”
The British Library reportedly now boasts the world’s most significant collection of Wilde manuscripts, including drafts of his major plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Laura Walker, the British Library’s lead curator of modern archives and manuscripts, said this extraordinary collection makes Wilde’s pass all the more meaningful: “We really want to honour Wilde now and acknowledge what happened to him. Section 11 of the law, which related to the criminalisation of homosexuality, was unjust.”
