On the face of it, Oscar Wilde and decadent poet Ernest Dowson had little in common. So what drew these two men to each other? How did Dowson come to be one of Wilde's most stalwart defenders?
In this talk for the Oscar Wilde Society, Jad Adams explores the unlikely friendship between Wilde and Dowson during the last part of the 19th century. Adams is the author of Madder Music, Stronger Wine, the biography of Ernest Dowson, which has just been reissued to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Dowson's death in 1900, aged just 32.
Adams is introduced by Vanessa Heron, chairman of the Oscar Wilde Society, and his talk is followed by a few words from Don Mead, BEM, the society's honorary vide president.
Ernest Dowson was one of the major poets of the romantic late Victorian decadent movement. One of England's poète maudits, he was an alcoholic and a severe depressive who wrote movingly about futile love. Despite his relative obscurity, he gave the English language such memorable phrases as 'gone with the wind' and 'days of wine and roses'.
Jad Adams is also the author of the 2024 book Decadent Women: Yellow Book Lives. Learn more at https://www.jadadams.co.uk/.