Some while back, the literary biography industry slowed as it began to run out of subjects to write about. It found a new avenue in studies of the wives of writers. Since then, it has broadened out into parents. Now Matthew Sturgis further extends the remit to brothers and sisters with this beguiling biographical triptych.

Sturgis is the author of acclaimed biographies of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. So it’s no surprise that his first two choices are their siblings, Willie and Mabel. Keen-eyed readers will notice he shares a surname with the third subject here, Howard Sturgis, brother of the popular novelist Julian Sturgis. Turns out, the two Sturgises were great-great-uncles of our current author, so he has a familial interest.

These choices, and this running order, have the effect of front-loading the book. Few have heard of Julian Sturgis now, and however much you may admire the sinister certainties of Aubrey Beardsley’s black-ink illustrations, Oscar Wilde towers over them both. As well as a figurehead of the gay rights movement,