Gross Indecency : the Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

In 1895 Oscar Wilde brought a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry for publicly maligning him as a sodomite, thus setting in motion a chain of events which culminated in Wilde's own conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency. Weaving together original courtroom transcripts with writings by Wilde and his contemporaries, Gross Indecency charts the tragic downfall of the most sophisticated man of Victorian letters at the hands of a society that was itself outwardly elegant and adventurous, yet inwardly deeply repressive and vindictive. "Kaufman has dramatized Wilde's fall with the sort of rapier stylization that Wilde himself would have admired." (Time)