On May 19, 1897, Irish author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was released from Reading Prison, where he had finished, in ill health, his hard labor sentence for “gross indecency.” His “Ballad of Reading Gaol,” first published pseudonymously in a periodical with wide circulation amongst criminals, quickly achieved the status of a
He died less than three years later, in exile in Europe. His most famous works include the play The Importance of Being Earnest, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the fascinating essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”
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Although Wilde suggested that the Ballad should be first published in Reynolds’s Magazine on a claim that it were widely read by criminals, the claim was a jape. And The Ballad of Reading Gaol was instead first published separately by Leonard Smithers, a publisher and bookseller known for decadent, erotic, or pornographic material.