Books

Ballad of Reading Gaol by C.3.3, Oscar Wilde, Mustard boards with white cloth spine. Condition: In very good condition. Light soiling to original publisher's two-tone mustard and white cloth boards and spine. Seventh printing of Leonard Smithers Edition, 1899. 8°. 31 pages. Original Hardcover (Quarter vellum with mustard boards). This edition was printed on 23 June 1899 and was the first to reveal the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde in square brackets under his cell number on the title page. (Mason, Stuart, 1914; new ed. 1972, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde. Rota pub; Haskell House pgs. 408–423).

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.