The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Softcover

Wilde, Oscar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1479420301 ISBN 13: 9781479420308

Publisher: An Oscar Wilde Book, 2016

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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 Library Journal

Woodstock's facsimile series takes a walk on the Wilde side with this poetry duo from 1898 and 1892, respectively. The former volume offers one long poem, while the latter contains about 50 shorter pieces. These reproductions additionally include scholarly introductions.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: An Oscar Wilde Book
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1479420301
• ISBN 13: 9781479420308
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 44