The average life is made up of millions of moments, some memorable, most forgettable, but occasionally it’s defined by a single one.
For Oscar Wilde, such a moment came on February 28th 1895 when he received a card from the ninth Marquess of Queensberry denouncing him as a “somdomite”, in anger at the playwright’s relationship with his son, Lord Alfred, known as Bosie. Showing the note to friends that night, they encouraged him to sue. When the case was heard in court, however, it wasn’t the Marquess who found himself in the dock, but Oscar himself. Disgrace, ignominy and jail followed, and by 1900 he was living in penury in Paris, where he died alone at the age of forty-six.
But what if Oscar had chosen differently?
What if he’d laughed off the illiterate rantings of a homophobic bully, ripped up the offending missive, and simply got on with his life?
That’s the premise of my new novel, The Weigh of Angels, which opens with that infamous moment in London but features a more pragmatic Oscar. There are plays to write, after all. Champagne to drink. And boys to seduce. Why waste time with frivolous lawsuits?
Set across seven decades, the novel takes in crucial world events and features a multitude of real-life characters, from T.S. Eliot to Mickey Rooney, Virginia Woolf to Katharine Hepburn, and Emmeline Pankhurst to Winston Churchill. And like my most popular novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies, it’s a drama, a tragedy and a comedy all combined in one.
I thoroughly enjoyed recreating one of the great writers of all time and offering him the chance to live the life he never did. I hope readers will feel that I’ve done him justice.
– John Boyne
