Books

London: Leonard Smithers, 1898. First edition. Very Good. One of 800 copies on handmade Van Gelder paper. A Very Good copy of the book. Spine toned, cloth with some soiling and a previous owner's bookplate on the front paste-down. Minor offsetting to the end papers, otherwise in nice shape internally. Wilde's later work, based on his two years hard labor at Reading Gaol for "gross indecency." Published under the pseudonym "C. 3. 3." for his cell block because the publisher feared having his name on the work would adversely affect sales. The poem is based on a fellow inmate convicted of murdering his wife and generated one of the great lines from Wilde, "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." Wilde continued to revise his plays until his death in 1900, but said that he had lost the joy of writing and would write no other new works. Very Good.

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.

Look for the publisher Leonard Smithers, the year 1898.