Wilde, Oscar: Home

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand in 1897, after his release from Reading Gaol. 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, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was hung for the murder of his wife. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole. 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. Wilde adopted the proletarian ballad form, and suggested it be published in Reynold's Magazine, "because it circulates widely among the criminal classes - to which I now belong - for once I will be read by my peers - a new experience for me". The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the pseudonym "C.3.3.", which stood for "cell block C, landing 3, cell 3"; Wilde's cell number. In the prison system, prisoners were identified only by their cell numbers and not by name"