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This is the limited issue of Wilde s poem resulting from his incarceration for "gross indecency" in Reading Gaol, which caused Wilde s "utter social destruction" and hastened his death. The poem, 109 stanzas of six lines, was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell blockC, landing3, cell3. This limited first printing of 800 copies swiftly sold out. It was bound in quarter white cloth over mustard cloth sides with a wide, blank rule transition, the contents of 770 of these 800 copies printed on hand-made, laid paper with untrimmed fore and bottom edges. Condition of this copy is very good overall. The binding is tight and square with bright spine gilt print, though the spine is typically toned, the binding soiled overall with some shelf wear to extremities, and some delamination spots to the mustard cloth of the rear cover and fore edges. The contents show no previous ownership marks and only trivial spotting, though there is significant transfer browning to the endpapers from the pastedown glue.On 25 May 1895 Irish writer Oscar Fingal O Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was found guilty of "gross indecency" with two male prostitutes and sentenced to two years penal servitude with hard labor. "Wildewas also found guilty on two counts charging gross indecency with a person unknown on two separate occasions in the Savoy Hotel. These may in fact have related to acts committed by[the ninth marquess of] Queensberry'sson,Lord Alfred Douglas�" It was the ensuing accusations, counter-accusations, and legal row with Queensberry that led to Wilde s undoing. "Far more severe than any court verdict was the utter social destruction ofWilde." Moreover, Wilde s "blameless, and somewhat neglected, family were utterly innocent sufferers."Wilde'sfirst prison month was in Pentonville, from whence he was transferred to Wandsworth, before being sent to the much smaller Reading Goal in November. "Wilde'sprison experience was physically and psychologically destructive�" A prison fall exacerbated the middle-ear disease from which he died five years later. In the course of his incarceration, "Wildefixed his mind onChrist, first as a person, then (inThe Ballad of Reading Gaol) as a redeeming god. The sublime elimination of himself in the thought of the suffering of his fellow prisoners, in his time and in all time, permeates the letters to theDaily Chronicleand theBallad, all written after his release.""The elimination of self had its apogee inThe Ballad of Reading Gaol,whichWildebegan to write at the end of May [1897], the month in which he was released, completing it in October, and seeing it published bySmithersin February 1898, initially signedC. 3. 3. The work would not be published under Wilde s own name until the seventh edition of June 1899."Its theme was the man hanged in Reading whileWildewas there,Charles Thomas Wooldridge (1866 1897), trooper of theRoyal Horse Guards, who had murdered his wife in what today seems a clear attack of mental illness. With high dramatic senseWildeturned the sufferings of all the other convicts into a subordinate but supportive chorus. The poem made no denial of guilt, although its hanged prisoner ultimately suffered more than the rest, and embodied their agonies more intensely� Hatred of the prison system and of the human oppression that created it animated theBallad: but the poem confronted that cruelty with the love ofChristagainst which it offended.Chestertonwould see theBalladas 'a cry for common justice and brotherhood very much deeper, more democratic' than the most radical protest of the age (G. K. Chesterton,Victorian Age in Literature[1913], 227)."Reference: ODNB.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol (/rɛdɪŋ dʒeɪl/) on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. During his imprisonment, he witnessed the events leading up to the hanging of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, for the murder of his wife; these events inspired the poem.