Items related to The Ballad of Reading Gaol
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile either in Berneval-le-Grand or in Dieppe, France, after his release from Reading Gaol in 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895. During his imprisonment, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen. He was aged 30 when executed. Wilde spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them, but rather the poem highlights the brutalisation of the punishment that all convicts share. The poem consists of 109 stanzas of 6 lines. A version with only 63 of the stanzas, and allegedly based on the original draft, was included in the posthumous editions of Wilde's poetry edited by Robert Ross, ""for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation."" Both versions are included here."
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About the Author:
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
From the Inside Flap:
'This edition does full justice to Wilde’s harrowing masterpiece with outstanding illustrations by Peter Hay.
‘I have seldom seen the Ballad illustrated with more simple power and by someone who hasn’t just read it, but obviously knows a good deal about Wilde’s life in prison and has felt his way under Oscar’s skin for the duration of that terrible experience’
Merlin Holland
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherWildside Press
- Publication date2016
- ISBN 10 147942031X
- ISBN 13 9781479420315
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages44
- Rating
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