
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde
'The Ballad of Reading Gaol ' Summary
The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.
During his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, 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, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. He was aged 30 when executed.
Wilde wrote the poem in mid-1897 while staying with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole. 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. Wilde juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves". Wilde too was separated from his wife and sons. He adopted the proletarian ballad form, and suggested it be published in Reynold's Magazine, "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes – to which I now belong – for once I will be read by my peers – a new experience for me".
The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. This ensured that Wilde's name – by then notorious – did not appear on the poem's front cover. It was not commonly known, until the 7th printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. was actually Wilde. The first edition, of 800 copies, sold out within a week, and Smithers announced that a second edition would be ready within another week; that was printed on 24 February, in 1,000 copies, which also sold well. A third edition, of 99 numbered copies "signed by the author", was printed on 4 March, on the same day a fourth edition of 1,200 ordinary copies was printed. A fifth edition of 1,000 copies was printed on 17 March, and a sixth edition was printed in 1,000 copies on 21 May 1898. So far the book's title page had identified the author only as C.3.3., although many reviewers, and of course those who bought the numbered and autographed third edition copies, knew that Wilde was the author, but the seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3. The poem brought him a small income for the rest of his life.
The poem consists of 109 stanzas of 6 lines, of 8-6-8-6-8-6 syllables, and rhyming a-b-c-b-d-b. Some stanzas incorporate rhymes within some or all of the 8-syllable lines. The whole poem is grouped into 6 untitled sections of 16, 13, 37, 23, 17 and 3 stanzas. A version with only 63 of the stanzas, divided into 4 sections of 15, 7, 22 and 19 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".
Book Details
Language
EnglishOriginal Language
EnglishPublished In
1898Genre/Category
Tags/Keywords
Authors

Oscar Wilde
Ireland
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, the early 1890s saw him become...
Books by Oscar WildeDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
Related books

Winter: A Dirge by Robert Burns
LibriVox volunteers bring you 20 different recordings of Winter: A Dirge by Robert Burns. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of January 1...

Odes and Sonnets by Clark Ashton Smith
It showcases Smith's mastery of the poetic form and his unique style, which blends elements of the fantastical and the macabre. The poems in "Odes an...

Guards Came Through and other Poems by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
This is a volume of poems by Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1919. Many of them concern wartime experiences, and reflect on the themes of war, confli...

His Lady Friend by Ring Lardner
What if a poem could transport you to the world of baseball and love? Ring Lardner's poem "His Lady Friend" is a witty and heartwarming tale of a bas...

Wilderness by Carl Sandburg
This fortnightly prose poem is guaranteed to locate the aboriginal poet in you! Come one come all.

Home Songs by John Charles McNeill
Home Songs by John Charles McNeill is a collection of poems that will transport you to the heart of the American South, where love, loss, and nature a...

Epitaph On A Goldfish by Richard le Gallienne
This short poem, written by Richard Le Gallienne, explores the themes of death, beauty, and the fleeting nature of life through the lens of a goldfish...

唐诗三百首 卷一 Three Hundred Tang Poems, Volume 1 by Various
The Three Hundred Tang Poems is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778...

The Blue Poetry Book by Andrew Lang
It is a timeless anthology that showcases the beauty of poetry through a range of styles and themes. Each poem is carefully selected and presented in...

Health by Edward Coote Pinkney
Edward Coote Pinkney's "A Health" is a collection of lyric poems that reflect the themes of love, nature, death, and melancholy. Pinkney's work draws...
Reviews for The Ballad of Reading Gaol
No reviews posted or approved, yet...