The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Written after his release from prison, this long poem is unlike anything else Wilde produced. It tells of a fellow inmate hanged for murdering his wife, and it widens into a haunting meditation on guilt, punishment, and the line, repeated like a tolling bell, that each man kills the thing he loves. Gone are the epigrams and the glitter; in their place is plain, pounding grief and a fierce compassion for the condemned. Drawn from the suffering of his own two years of hard labor, it stands as both his greatest poem and one of the strongest protests against the cruelty of the prison system ever written. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.