Books

Second Russian edition of the poem. First edition of this translation. The first translation of Oscar Wilde's 'Ballad' by N. Korn (presumably a pen name used by Korney Chukovsky) appeared in 1903, but it was riddled with errors. The following year, another version by Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), a Russian symbolist poet and translator, was published. In the summer of 1902, Balmont traveled to England and visited the town of Reading, where Wilde had been imprisoned. In November 1903, Balmont delivered a lecture titled 'Oscar Wilde's Poetry and The Ballad...' and presented his translation at a meeting of the Literary-Artistic Circle in Moscow. During his lecture, he likened Wilde to Nietzsche and hailed him as 'the greatest English writer of the end of the last century'. Balmont also prepared translations of works by Edgar Allan Poe, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Walt Whitman, and Robert Burns. His translations were always infused with his own distinctive style, often referred to as…

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.