Many years after the downfall of Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas, hoping to boost sales of his autobiography, asked Bernard Shaw to write the preface. An unlikely but enduring friendship developed from this first letter, and the entire collection is presented in this book. The subjects covered by the letters include comments on Wilde and his circle, Shakespeare and Ibsen, Einstein, Freud and Marx, Eliot and Auden, Chamberlain, Hitler and others.