WILDE (Oscar, 1854-1900, Irish Poet & Dramatist)

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" later Edition of the First Edition (7th printing of June 1899), 31 pages, original hardcover, quarter vellum with mustard boards, Leonard Smithers very slight fraying on spine but tight copy in very good condition

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile either in Berneval-le-Grand or in Dieppe, France, after his release from Reading Gaol (pronounced "redding jail") on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading, after being convicted of homosexual offences 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 only 30 when executed. Wilde spent mid-1897 with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge. 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. The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on February 13, 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 February 24th, in 1000 copies, which also sold well. A third edition, of 99 numbered copies "signed by the author" was printed on March 4th, on the same day a fourth edition of 1200 ordinary copies was printed. A fifth edition of a 1000 copies was printed on March 17th, and a sixth edition was printed in 1000 copies on May 21st, 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 June 23, 1899 actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3.

Item Date:  1899

Stock No:  39285      £475

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