History Commons^™

Queensberry’S Misrule: Reputation, Celebrity, And The Idea Of The Victorian Gentleman, Amy Milne-Smith

History Faculty Publications

To Victorians, the Marquis of Queensberry was a well-known aristocrat. As the father of Lord Alfred Douglas and the nemesis of Oscar Wilde, Queensberry was the impetus behind Wilde’s legal troubles. He is also renowned as the eponym of boxing’s first, and most famous rulebook. As a man who flouted every prescription for gentlemanly conduct, he provoked a variety of reactions. The working-class response to the Marquis, for example, suggests a more complicated relationship between the aristocracy and labour than has previously been recognized. Queensberry’s lifestyle also pointed to an enduring aristocratic rakish subculture within the respectable British metropole; for …