De Profundis. The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Oscar Wilde

The publication presents the late works of Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), a world-famous Irish English-language poet, prose writer, playwright, essayist, journalist, representative of aestheticism, wit, and master of paradoxes, where the themes of spiritual evolution through suffering and compassion for others’ suffering come to the fore. De Profundis is an extremely sincere confession of the author, written during his imprisonment and addressed to his former friend Lord Alfred Douglas. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem written after Wilde’s release and dedicated to the memory of his fellow prisoner Charles Thomas Wooldridge, whose execution was a personal shock for the writer and a reason to accuse the British penitentiary system of inhumanity.