Oscar Wilde

Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a long poem of 109 six-line stanzas: 654 lines in all. Wilde dedicated the poem to a fellow prisoner, Charles Thomas Woolridge ('C. T. W.'), a soldier who had been convicted for murdering his wife and who was hanged in Reading Gaol in July 1896 - the first execution that had taken place at the prison for eighteen years. Woolridge is the 'He' of the poem's opening stanzas, and also the inspiration for the recurring refrain: 'Each man kills the thing he loves.' Although Wilde never met Woolridge, he had observed him in the prison yard on several occasions.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol was published in February 1898 not under Wilde's name but rather his prison number, 'C.3.3.' His identity was only established the following July. Although Reading was the most famous prison Wilde was sent to, he was not imprisoned there immediately: first of all, in March 1895, he was at Newgate, then at Pentonville, before being moved to Wandsworth, and then finally, in November 1895, to Reading.