Books

First and limited edition, one of 800 unnumbered copies printed on handmade paper; a further 30 copies on japon were also issued. Wilde published this work under the pseudonym "C.3.3." after his cell in Reading Gaol (the third cell on the third landing of Gallery C). The first edition sold out rapidly, and a second edition was printed within weeks. Octavo. Original white quarter cloth, spine lettered in gilt, yellow cloth sides, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Bookplate of Douglass Cooper to front pastedown. Spine ends bumped, a little soiling to cloth, endpapers lightly browned and foxed, else a near-fine copy in unusually nice condition. Mason 371.

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.