The Ballad of Reading Gaol
The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand and Naples, after his release from Reading Gaol 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.
Wilde's cell in Reading Gaol as it appears today
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1904)
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
1882 photograph
The Wilde family home on Merrion Square
Oscar Wilde at Oxford in 1876
Photograph by Elliott & Fry of Baker Street, London, 1881