Poetry Club: The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

We will meet at the Victoria pub in Jericho, with a room booked in the snug (to the right when you walk in).

We will discuss The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde’s most famous and significant poem—a powerful work exploring themes of suffering and justice.

On 25 May 1895, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour—a punishment that was considered more severe than mere penal servitude. He was first sent, briefly, to Newgate Prison for initial processing, and the next week was moved to Pentonville prison, where "hard labour" consisted of many hours of pointless effort in walking a treadmill or picking oakum (separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes), and allowed to read only the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress. Prisoners were not allowed to speak to each other, and, out of their solitary cells, were required to wear a cap with a sort of thick veil so they would not be recognised by other prisoners. A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison, which had a similar regimen. While he was there, he was required to declare bankruptcy, by which he lost virtually all his possessions including his books and manuscripts. On 23 November 1895 he was again moved, to the prison at Reading, which also had similar rules, where he spent the remainder of his sentence, and was assigned the third cell on the third floor of C ward—and thereafter addressed and identified only as "C.3.3."—prisoners were identified only by their cell numbers and not by name.

About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his common-law wife (and promptly presenting himself and confessing to a policeman) on 29 March 1896. On 17 June, Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution which took place on 7 July 1896—the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. Though Wilde observed Wooldridge in the prison yard only from a distance, he dedicated The Ballad of Reading Gaol to Wooldridge as C. T. W.