The Ballad of Reading Gaol

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

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The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile either in Berneval or Dieppe, France, after his release from Reading Gaol on or about 19 May 1897.

Wilde was incarcerated in HMP Reading, in Reading, Berkshire, after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years hard labour in prison.
During his imprisonment, on Saturday 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge (CIR 1866 - July 7, 1896) 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 only aged 30 when executed. This had a profound effect on Wilde, inspiring the line "we all are guilty of killing the thing we love."
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. This ensured that Wildes name - by then notorious - did not appear on the poems front cover. It was not commonly known, until the seventh printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. was actually Oscar Wilde.