The Ballad of Reading Gaol
By Oscar Wilde
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About this ebook
Oscar Wilde
Born in Ireland in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost.
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Reviews for The Ballad of Reading Gaol
107 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This beautifully-written six-chapter poem movingly portrays the monstrous inhumanity of prison life, and the stark-white hypocrisy of capital punishment. It also reminded me of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner at several times, in the rhythm of its language (though the meter and rhyme scheme are different), as well as in the themes of guilt and imprisonment, the despair-induced visions of devils, and the metaphor of fate as a game of dice. First Oscar Wilde I've read, and I definitely want to read more.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It was really, really good though. Five stars good. I almost cried. I don't have a whole lot else to say about it. Apparently Reading was specifically designed to implement the separate system, so I expect Wilde probably experienced it.Bosie's testimony is what sent him to Reading in the first place, so... the obvious interpretation is a combination of that, and maybe whatever was wrong with their relationship in the other direction that led Bosie to do that. It's possible that being in Reading under those circumstances and witnessing an execution like the one described in the poem (which he did, the poem was inspired by an execution that happened while he was there), could have combined by resonating so strongly with each other to make him feel that he was seeing a great universal truth of some kind.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From personal experience, Oscar Wilde writes his final work. While imprisoned at Reading jail for his homosexual acts, he witnesses a man executed for killing his wife. Thus he writes
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
This poem is even sadder after reading about the circumstances in which it was written. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The pain of the author is almost too much to bear - even more so given who is suffering and why he is suffering. The injustice defies belief.
Book preview
The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde
THE
BALLAD OF
READING GAOL
By
OSCAR WILDE
First published in 1898
Copyright © 2020 Ragged Hand
This edition is published by Ragged Hand,
an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without the
express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.
For more information visit
www.readandcobooks.co.uk
In Memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime Trooper
of the Royal Horse Guards.
Obiit H. M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896
Contents
Oscar Wilde
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and Wilde became fluent in French and German early in life. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pate. Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist. After university, he moved to London and became involved with the fashionable cultural and social circles of the day. At the age of just