Books

London: Smithers, 1898. First. hardcover. very good(+). Slim 8vo, mustard cloth backed in white with gilt lettering. London: Leonard Smithers, 1898. Limited First Edition. One of 800 copies printed on hand-made paper on one side only. Inscribed on title page; "I.O. from F.A.S. Guilsborough Hall." A very good copy with some bubbling of the cloth and light soil. Irene Osgood, later the wife of R.H. Sherard (author of the life of Oscar Wilde) was a novelist. This book was given to her by Sir Frank Athelstane Swettenham, Preserved in an attractive,1/4 leather slipcase with an elaborately gilt spine.

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.

Look for the publisher Leonard Smithers, the year 1898.