Lord Alfred Douglas, VED from VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS, Editor
2018
THE manuscript of this book was completed by me and handed over to the publishers as long ago as last July. Certain persons thereupon deemed it advisable to apply to the Court for an injunction restraining me from including in my book any of the letters from Oscar Wilde which were in my possession, and they further applied for an injunction restraining me from quoting from the unpublished portion of the "De Profundis" manuscript which is now sealed up at the British Museum and which was used against me in open Court as part of the justification in the defence to a libel action brought by me, in April 1913. The application for these injunctions was made in the Vacation Court before Mr. Justice Astbury, the most recent recruit to the Judicial Bench. It was immediately granted, and though I was advised by counsel to appeal against the decision, I thought it better to accept it, at any rate for the moment. Consequently, all the copious extracts I was intending to publish from the “De Profundis," which extracts had already been reproduced in all the newspapers at the hearing of the action of Douglas v. Ransome and The Times Book Club have been entirely removed. The same applies to those letters of Wilde's which I had originally included in my book. As far as the letters are concerned, the omission does not very much affect the book. The letters were included not to make points against my opponents, but merely as interesting curiosities. The enforced omission of the extracts from the unpublished “De Profundis" has, on the other hand, been an undoubted handicap to me. A considerable portion of this book is devoted to a reply to the violently mendacious attacks made upon me and upon my family by Wilde in that unpublished portion of the “De Profundis” which has been accepted by the authorities of the British Museum from the literary executor of the late author. Obviously it is very difficult to reply to an attack which one is unable to quote, and I can only say that I have m
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