Thomas William Hodgson Crosland (21 July 1865 – 23 December 1924) [1] was a British author, poet and journalist. [2] [3]
Crosland was born in Leeds in 1865, [2] [4] the son of Methodist New Connexion preacher and superintendent of the Prudential Assurance Company William Crosland (son of cloth manufacturer Thomas Crosland, of Isles House, Holbeck, Leeds) and Hannah, daughter of farmer John Hodgson. [5]
He was an associate and friend of Lord Alfred Douglas, who was Oscar Wilde's lover. The bitter feud between Lord Alfred's father the Marquess of Queensberry and his son resulted in Wilde suing the Marquess for libel at Douglas's urging. Subsequently, Wilde was charged with homosexuality after the Marquess produced evidence of Wilde's behaviour as justifying the libel. In 1895 Wilde was found guilty and imprisoned. After the trial Crosland united with Douglas, who had become a pious Catholic, and together they persecuted Robbie Ross in the civil courts in a variety of actions. They also repeatedly wrote and visited the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions, trying to ensure Ross's arrest for homosexual offences. [6]
In 1913 the author Arthur Ransome recalled "the rather endearing story of his (Crosland's) first arrival in London from Yorkshire, by road, pushing a perambulator that was shared by manuscripts and a baby". This was at the trial of Ransome and others for libelling Douglas in Ransome's 1912 book on Wilde; Crosland and the impecunious Douglas had hoped for substantial damages but lost. When Douglas was declared bankrupt in February 1913, his solicitor had informed the court that damages of £2,500 "a fortune", were expected, which alarmed Ransome when he saw it in The Times . [7] The judge was rather scathing about Douglas's behaviour in the box, and the jury found that the words complained of were a libel but were true. Ransome's biographer referred to Crosland as a "shady associate" of Douglas, and Ross's biographer calls him "a narrow-minded bigot" and a "right-wing Tory". Crosland wrote a condemnation of Wilde's De Profundis , in verse, titled The First Stone, in 1912, and ghost-wrote Douglas's memoir Oscar Wilde and Myself in 1914. [8] [9]
In 1914, Robbie Ross, Oscar Wilde's literary executor and rival for Wilde's affection, charged Crosland with criminal libel, plus writs for criminal conspiracy and perjury against Douglas and Crosland jointly. Crosland was found not guilty, though the judge did say that acquittal would not imply that Ross was guilty of any offence. [10]
Crosland was a humanitarian who frequently wrote in his poems about the impoverished and sick and unemployed, especially caring about returned soldiers in the First World War. In 1894 he married Annie Moore. They had three sons: William Philip; John Jordan; and Laurence Oldmeadow. [11] After many illnesses, he died in Surrey in 1924, survived by his wife and their son John. John Crosland was father of the journalist Philip Crosland. [12]
A biography, The life and genius of T. W. H. Crosland, by W. Sorley Brown was published in 1928.
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, was a British nobleman of the Victorian era, remembered for his atheism, his outspoken views, his brutish manner, for lending his name to the "Queensberry Rules" that form the basis of modern boxing, and for his role in the downfall of the Irish author and playwright Oscar Wilde.
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, that carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, starting a close but stormy relationship. Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but some intimate notes were found and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married a poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.
Robert Baldwin Ross was a British journalist, art critic and art dealer, best known for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a devoted friend, lover, and literary executor. A grandson of the Canadian reform leader Robert Baldwin, and son of John Ross and Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin, Ross was a pivotal figure on the London literary and artistic scene from the mid-1890s to his early death, and mentored several literary figures, including Siegfried Sassoon. His open homosexuality, in a period when male homosexual acts were illegal, brought him many hardships.
Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and Swallows and Amazons is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1895.
Wilde is a 1997 British biographical romantic drama film directed by Brian Gilbert. The screenplay, written by Julian Mitchell, is based on Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography of Oscar Wilde. The film chronicles the turmoil in Wilde's life after he discovers his homosexuality. It stars Stephen Fry in the title role, with Jude Law, Vanessa Redgrave, Jennifer Ehle, Gemma Jones, Judy Parfitt, Michael Sheen, Zoë Wanamaker, and Tom Wilkinson in supporting roles.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde, also known as The Man with the Green Carnation and The Green Carnation, is a 1960 British drama film based on the libel and subsequent criminal cases involving Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry. It was written by Allen and Ken Hughes, directed by Hughes, and co-produced by Irving Allen, Albert R. Broccoli and Harold Huth. The screenplay was by Ken Hughes and Montgomery Hyde, based on an unperformed play The Stringed Lute by John Furnell. The film was made by Warwick Films and released by Eros Films.
Oscar Wilde is a 1960 biographical film about Oscar Wilde, made by Vantage Films and released by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Gregory Ratoff and produced by William Kirby, from a screenplay by Jo Eisinger, based on the play Oscar Wilde by Leslie Stokes and Sewell Stokes. The film starred Robert Morley, Ralph Richardson, Phyllis Calvert and Alexander Knox.
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde is a book that contains over a thousand pages of letters written by Oscar Wilde. Wilde's letters were first published as The Letters of Oscar Wilde in 1963, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis and published by his publishing firm.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Robert Sholto Johnstone Douglas, known as Sholto Douglas, or more formally as Sholto Johnstone Douglas, was a Scottish figurative artist, a painter chiefly of portraits and landscapes.
De Profundis is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie".
Oscar Wilde's life and death have generated numerous biographies.
The Academy was a review of literature and general topics published in London from 1869 to 1915, with a period from 1902 to 1905 when it was retitled The Academy and Literature. It was founded by Charles Appleton.
La Sainte Courtisane is an unfinished play by Oscar Wilde written in 1894. The original draft was left in a taxi cab by the author, and was never completed. It was first published in 1908 by Wilde's literary executor, Robert Ross. It has never been performed, and has been little studied.
Sir Richard Somers Travers Christmas Humphreys was a noted British barrister and judge who, during a sixty-year legal career, was involved in the cases of Oscar Wilde and the murderers Hawley Harvey Crippen, George Joseph Smith and John George Haigh, the 'Acid Bath Murderer', among many others.
William More Adey was an English art critic, editor and aesthete. He was a co-editor of The Burlington Magazine, but is perhaps best known for having been a friend and member of the inner circle of Oscar Wilde from the early 1890s until Wilde's death in 1900. As a defender of Wilde during his trial and imprisonment, Adey visited the fallen author in Reading Gaol, attempted to negotiate on behalf of the gaoled writer's interests as his de facto guardian, and oversaw a collection that was used to purchase necessities of life, including clothes, for him upon his release.
Christopher Sclater Millard was the author of the first bibliography of the works of Oscar Wilde as well as several books on Wilde. Millard's bibliography was instrumental in enabling Wilde's literary executor, Robert Baldwin Ross, to establish copyright on behalf of his estate.
Charles Granville was an English book publisher, publishing in the 1900s and early 1910s as Stephen Swift or Stephen Swift Ltd. He published two literary magazines, the Oxford and Cambridge Review and the Eye Witness, which carried works by "up and coming" literary authors, and also a third, Rhythm. In October 1912 he was wanted for embezzlement and bigamy, and fled the country. He was brought back, tried, and imprisoned for bigamy. His publishing company was liquidated.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)T.W.H. Crosland (1865–1924)
T. W. H. Crosland, author of "The Unspeakable Scot" and a number of other books, who was charged with being concerned with Lord Alfred Douglas and others to charge falsely with a criminal offense Robert B. Ross, executor of the estate of the late Oscar Wilde, was found not guilty by a jury yesterday
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