Books

Royal Arcade London W.: Leonard Smithers, 1898. First Edition. Cloth (quarter white cloth over orange cloth). Very Good. 8vo. 23 by 14.5 cm. Blank, colophon, half title leaf, title leaf, dedication leaf, 31 pp. One of 830 copies in first issue, this being one of 800 on hand-made Dutch Van Gelder paper. Published pseudonymously, with C.3.3. standing for WIlde's cell location in the prison. Copy with ownership inscription or autograph of Elliott F. Shepard, the husband of a Vanderbilt heiress (Daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt, and grand-daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt), who was himself a founder of the New York Bar Association and the owner of a New York newspaper of the day. The cover has a fair amount of soiling, both a bit of grubbiness and some more pronounced, although not large, stains or spots of color loss. Spine gilt lettering still readable but a touch faded. Interior-wise, other than brown impression on free endpapers, the result of the paste used to attach the…

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.

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