Books

First edition, retaining the understandably rare thin plain jacket. We can trace only three copies complete with their dust jackets in auction records: at Parke-Bernet in 1941, and at Sotheby's in 1975 and 2004. This is one of 800 copies printed on handmade paper; an additional 30 copies were printed on japon. 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, top edge cut, others uncut. With original unprinted dust jacket. Housed in a custom brown quarter morocco chemise with paper-covered sides and interior patterned in orange and green. Text printed on rectos only. Binding and contents fresh; fragile jacket with chips to spine and fold ends, large section of foot neatly repaired without loss, couple of short closed tears and marks: a fine copy in the very well-preserved jacket. 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.