This commemorative edition of the poem is illustrated with the powerfully moving wood engravings of Garrick Palmer. I see that it is my name that terrifies.’ After the seventh edition (1899) the publishers added his full name in brackets after C.3.3. His tomb bears an inscription from The Ballad of Reading Gaol: And alien tears will fill for him/Pitys long broken urn/For his mourners will be outcast men/And outcasts always mourn. He noted to the publisher that ‘it would be better to publish there without my name. Smithers only risked printing 400 out of the projected 800 copies in January 1898, but due to demand, printed the remaining 400 early in February.Ĭ.3.3. Smithers sent a final proof to him in Naples on 29 December, and the work was officially published on 13 February, by which time Wilde had returned to Paris. Upon his release Wilde had begun writing the poem in exile at the Châlet Bourgevat, Berneval, near Dieppe in the summer of 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading Jail after being convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour in prison. Bookplate of Vyvyan Holland -Second son of Oscar Wilde – (possibly in facsimile) to front pastedown. One of Eight Hundred Copies printed on handmade paper. Publisher’s white linen-backed cinnamon cloth by Matthew Bell & Co., some browning to endpapers and light soiling to covers, light wear to head & tail of spine internally a fine bright copy. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to. If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email.

For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit. A powerfully illustrated edition of Oscar Wildes Ballad of Reading Gaol Includes original images from Peter Hay With a specially-commissioned Afterword by. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

The ballad of reading gaol text