On 17 June, Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896-the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. Ībout 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 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. While he was there, he was required to declare bankruptcy, by which he lost virtually all his possessions including his books and manuscripts. A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison, which had a similar regimen. 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. 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. On Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour-a punishment that was considered more severe than mere penal servitude. History of the poem Wilde's cell in Reading Gaol as it appears today A version with only 63 of the stanzas, divided into 4 sections of 15, 7, 22 and 19 stanzas, and allegedly based on the original draft, was included in the posthumous editions of Wilde's poetry edited by Robert Ross, "for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the entire poem too long for declamation". The whole poem is grouped into 6 untitled sections of 16, 13, 37, 23, 17 and 3 stanzas. Some stanzas incorporate rhymes within some or all of the 8-syllable lines. The poem consists of 109 stanzas of 6 lines, of 8-6-8-6-8-6 syllables, and rhyming ABCBDB. The poem brought him a small income for the rest of his life. So far the book's title page had identified the author only as C.3.3., although many reviewers, and of course those who bought the numbered and autographed third edition copies, knew that Wilde was the author, but the seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3. A fifth edition of 1,000 copies was printed on 17 March, and a sixth edition was printed in 1,000 copies on. A third edition, of 99 numbered copies "signed by the author", was printed on 4 March, on the same day a fourth edition of 1,200 ordinary copies was printed. The first edition, of 800 copies, sold out within a week, and Smithers announced that a second edition would be ready within another week that was printed on 24 February, in 1,000 copies, which also sold well. It was not commonly known, until the 7th printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. This ensured that Wilde's name – by then notorious – did not appear on the poem's front cover. The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. He 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". Wilde too was separated from his wife and sons. Wilde juxtaposes the executed man and himself with the line "Yet each man kills the thing he loves". 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. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole. Wilde wrote the poem in 1897, beginning it in Berneval-le-Grand and completing it in Naples. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.ĭuring his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand and Naples, after his release from Reading Gaol ( / r ɛ.
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