Books

Slim 8vo. London: Leonard Smithers, 1898. Slim 8vo, [4]. 31pp. Printed on hand-made paper on one side of the page with deckle finish. Original quarter white linen, mustard boards, backstrip lettered in gilt, a very good copy slightly soiled and backstrip lightly tanned.

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.