About the Author

Robert Ross, son of the Attorney-General of Canada, was a key figure in avant garde arts and letters of the 1890s. Very unusually for this period, he acknowledged and accepted his homosexuality. It was he who first seduced Wilde, who helped him in his imprisonment and exile, and who rescued the estate to provide for Wilde’s sons. His posthumous rehabilitation of Beardsley rescued the artist’s reputation for future generations.  Matthew Sturgis is the leading authority on the Decadent period, with acclaimed biographies of Beardsley, Wilde and Sickert.