Oscar Wilde 1912. The book only briefly mentioned Wilde's life, but subsequently Ransome (and The Times Book Club) were sued for libel by Lord Alfred Douglas. The trial in April 1913 was in a way a re-run of the trials of Oscar Wilde. The trial resulted from Douglas's rivalry with Robbie Ross for Wilde (and his need of money). Douglas lost after a reading of "De Profundis" refuted his claims. Wilde's life was still waiting for independent, true scholarship when Richard Ellmann began researching his 1987 biography "Oscar Wilde", for which he posthumously won a National (USA) Book Critics Circle Award in
Oscar Wilde in favour of a more nuanced view. The play was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largely trashed by conservative critics. It was followed by "A Woman of No Importance" in 1893, another Victorian comedy, revolving around the spectre of illegitimate births, mistaken identities and late revelations. Wilde was commissioned to write two more plays and "An Ideal Husband", written in 1894, followed in January 1895. Peter Raby said these essentially English plays were well-pitched, "Wilde, with one eye on the dramatic genius of Ibsen, and the other on the commercial competition in London's West End, targeted his