Ballad of Reading Gaol

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol (pronounced "jail") in 1895 after losing a criminal suit instigated against him by the Marquess of Queensberry (of boxing rules fame) for moral offenses against the marquess's son. The two-year imprisonment left the incredibly gifted and witty Wilde a broken man, bankrupt and ill. He left England for France where he remained until his death in 1900 at the age of 46. It was there that he wrote perhaps his most famous work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The poem, written as a memorial to C.T.W., who died in prison while Wilde was there, tells the emotions of an imprisoned man towards a fellow inmate who is to be hanged. This ballad has brought to the language the words: "For each man kills the thing he loves..." and reveals the insights of a man once the toast of England and America for his writing and witticisms brought through a crucible of...