Christopher Sclater Millard

Christopher Sclater Millard (7 November 1872 – 21 November 1927) was the author of the first bibliography of the works of Oscar Wilde as well as several books on Wilde. Millard's bibliography was instrumental in enabling Wilde's literary executor, Robert Baldwin Ross, to establish copyright on behalf of his estate. Millard was the son of the Vicar of Basingstoke. After graduating from Keble College Oxford he moved on to Salisbury Theological College but then converted to Roman Catholicism. In October 1899 e set up a Catholic School for boys aged 8 and upwards in Woodford Green, Essex . In April 1906, Millard was arrested at Iffley and charged with two counts of gross indecency. He pleaded guilty to avoid a third more serious charge of sodomy, which carried a maximum penalty of ten years' penal servitude, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1916, to avoid a second charge of gross indecency, Millard fled from London and spent several months on a farm in Northumberland before enlisting as a private in the Royal Fusiliers . He was sent to France though he was invalided back to England and discharged from the army in July 1917, whereupon he worked in the War Office as a decipherer of telegram. His arrest in January 1918 on warrant (which had been issued in 1916) led to twelve months imprisonment for gross indecency with males. After his release, Millard began a new occupation as a dealer of antiquarian books and rare manuscripts, doing business from his wooden bungalow at 8 Abercorn Place in St John's Wood.

Around 1900, Millard began his compilation and collection of Wildeana in earnest, collaborating with Robert Ross and another scholar of Wilde's works, Walter Edwin Ledger, and he continued to acquire material on and off from much of his life. In 1904 he travelled to Bagneux, south of Paris, with Wilde's friend and biographer Robert Sherard to visit Wilde's grave there. It was, he wrote, "a pilgrimage of love when we watered with our tears the roses and lilies with which we covered the poet's grave". In July 1914, Millard's Bibliography of Oscar Wilde appeared to wide acclaim. "It is my life's work", he wrote to Walter Ledger, "and the only thing I am likely to be remembered for to my merit." Ross called it "an astonishing and ingenious compilation", claiming that in ten minutes of turning the proofs he had learned "more about Wilde's writings than Wilde himself ever knew".

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