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
A Conversation with Oscar Wilde that the sculpture "already evokes more favourable response from the public than any other statue I know in London, with the possible exception of Peter Pan" (a much-reproduced statue, the original of which stands in Kensington Gardens). Charles Spencer, chief drama critic of "The Telegraph", while professing his liking for the artist as a person, wrote how he loathed her sculptures. With respect to "A Conversation", he wrote: The sculpture was one of five works or events considered in "The Resurrection of Oscar Wilde: A Cultural Afterlife", along with "the consecration of a window in Wilde's honour in Poet's Corner,