It was not commonly known, until the 7th printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. This ensured that Wilde's name – by then notorious – did not appear on the poem's front cover. And the bitter bread they weigh in scales Is full of chalk and lime, And Sleep will not lie down, but walks Wild-eyed. The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers in 1898 under the name C.3.3., which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. A month before his second letter appeared in 1898, Wilde published the Ballad of Reading Gaol, a grimly realistic poem which describes the hanging of. This had a profound effect on Wilde, inspiring the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. 1866 – 7 July 1896) had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading, after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.ĭuring his imprisonment, on Saturday 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile either in Berneval or in Dieppe, France, after his release from Reading Gaol on or about. Heres a virtual movie of Oscar Wilde reading the first 7 stanzas of his much loved poem 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'.
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