The Dead Past is the extraordinary last memoir of the oriental scholar, author and eccentric Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse. Like an opium dream, it blends truth and fantasy to bring alive a youth spent in the company of the leading personalities of the fin de si cle, including Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, Walter Pater, Paul Verlaine, Lord Rosebery, and the courtesan La Belle Ot ro, some of whom are described as his lovers. Over 70 years after being written, this edition brings it into print for the very first time.