The Ballad of Reading Gaol & De Profundis

One of the most famous and successful writers of his day, Oscar Wilde was celebrated as much for his flamboyant personality and his prodigious wit as for his provocative essays, touching fairy stories and satirical plays. But in May of 1895, he was sentenced to two years' hard labour for gross indecency.

Towards the end of the end of his sentence, Wilde wrote a long and terrible letter to his lover, meditating on their disastrous relationship and on the spiritual journey he had undergone while in prison. Given the title De Profundis when it was published five years after Wilde's death, it is one of the greatest, most far-ranging letters ever written.

During his imprisonment, Wilde also felt intense compassion for his fellow prisoners, which found expression in the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol which was finally published anonymously in 1898.