Oscar Wilde said the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about.
So the playwright surely would have approved of the British Library this week symbolically reissuing his reading pass 130 years after it was confiscated following his imprisonment in a gay sex scandal.
The British Library presented the reading pass in London on Thursday to his grandson, Merlin Holland.
It said the gesture was meant as a “tribute” to Wilde’s memory to acknowledge the “injustices and immense suffering” the Irish playwright faced after his 1895 conviction for gross indecency.
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Mr Holland, a writer based in France, where Wilde lived out his later years in exile, said “the restitution of his ticket is a lovely gesture of forgiveness and I’m sure his spirit will be touched and delighted”.
Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labour after his conviction for having gay relationships, and moved to France upon his release in 1897.
He had been in Pentonville Prison for three weeks when the reading room of the British Museum – which later became the British Library – cancelled his reading pass.
“He wouldn’t have known about it, which was probably as well,” said Mr Holland, who has just released a book about his grandfather, After Oscar: the Legacy of a Scandal.
“I think it would have just added to his misery to feel that one of the world’s great libraries had banned him from books just as the law had banned him from daily life.”
The presentation of the reissued reading pass to Mr Holland and the publication of his new book were timed to coincide with Wilde’s birthday on Thursday. The tribute was held at the British Library just behind St Pancras train station, where it moved from the British Museum in Bloomsbury in the 1990s.
The library holds a significant collection of the playwright’s works, including handwritten drafts of his most famous plays including The Importance of Being Ernest, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance and Lady Windermere’s Fan.
The library also holds De Profundis, a love letter Wilde wrote from jail to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the Marquess of Queensbury, had discovered that he and Wilde were in a relationship.
The marquess later distributed material in London denouncing Wilde as a misspelt “somdomite”. The Irish writer sued him for libel but lost, precipitating his criminal conviction later that year for gay relationships.
“We hope to not only honour Wilde’s memory but also acknowledge the injustices and immense suffering he faced as a result of his conviction,” said Carole Black, chair of the board of the British Library.
After Wilde’s 1895 conviction, his wife Constance and their two children moved to France to escape the scandal and changed their surname to Holland.
Merlin Holland, whose father was Wilde’s second son (writer Vyvyan Holland) was born in England but now lives in France, where his grandfather lived out his last years essentially as a broken man.
