The Trial of Oscar Wilde from the Shorthand Reports

A New Edition with Expanded Commentary and Annotation

De: Charles Grolleau, Lord Alfred Douglas

Narrado por: Tim Dalgleish

Charles Grolleau (1867-1940), a French author and translator of Omar Khayam, edited and published anonymously The Trial of Oscar Wilde (also titled The Shame of Oscar Wilde) in 1906, in Paris. Only 550 copies of this first edition were published. While Grolleau had some antipathy toward Wilde, he also saw the trials and sequent punishment Wilde had suffered for 'gross indecency' in 1895, as a tragedy. Grolleau’s work was not only one of the first on this subject to appear, however, it has also proved to be one of the clearest, most concise, and adroit. This new edition provides extensive commentary on the literary figures, such as Baudelaire, Swinburne, J.K. Huysmans, Mallarmé, Arthur Symons and Théophile Gautier, who formed Wilde's literary circle and, in some senses, underpinned his overconfidence in the shield of Art to protect him from the sword of social morality. Love is not a sin, whatever form it takes. Grolleau instinctively intuited that the hate and vengeance exacted by society at that time was hypocritical, or, at the least, too immediate and too brutal in its judgement and punishments. Returning to this contemporary account of such an infamous trial allows the modern listener a broader historical perspective. Grolleau’s words are, in fact, part of the history surrounding the immediate literary and social aftermath of Wilde’s death. The cultural legacy of Wilde’s life, and the manner of his death, would take many years and many biographies, films and literary studies to coagulate, but the blood was spilt in Grolleau’s lifetime and stained as readily in Wilde’s beloved France as it did in England.

Public Domain (P)2024 Tim Dalgleish