Hvem daterede Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde (født 16. oktober 1854, død 30. november 1900) var en irsk forfatter angiveligt opkaldt efter kong Oscar II, som hans far skulle have opereret for grå stær. ("Mit navn har to O'er, to F'er og to W'er," påpegede Wilde senere.)

Han har bl.a. skrevet The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891 Billedet af Dorian Gray) og The Importance of Being Earnest (1895 (på dansk Bunbury), af mange anset for den vittigste farce skrevet på engelsk.

Robert Baldwin Ross (25 May 1869 – 5 October 1918) 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.

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At the University of 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, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but Queensberry produced witnesses who attested to the truth of his claim, and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married the bisexual poet, Olive Custance, in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.

After converting to Catholicism in 1911, he repudiated homosexuality, and in a Catholic magazine, Plain English, expressed openly antisemitic views. He was jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over claims of World War I misconduct. Douglas wrote several books of verse, some in a homoerotic Uranian genre. The phrase "The love that dare not speak its name" appears in one (Two Loves), published in 1894 which is often misattributed to Wilde.