Signed book: The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Third printing, limited issue, numbered 16/99. London: Leonard Smithers, 1898. Hardcover bound in the publisher's purple and white linen, featuring a gilt floral ornament by Charles Ricketts on the front board and a gilt-lettered spine, 5.75 x 9, 31 pages. Signed on the colophon in ink by the author, "Oscar Wilde." Autographic condition: fine. Book condition: VG/None, with minor foxing to the white cloth binding and the ex-libris bookplate of Arthur Chester Rhodes affixed to the first free end page. Housed in a custom-made clamshell case with gilt-lettered spine.
Oscar Wilde composed The Ballad of Reading Gaol while living in exile in Berneval-le-Grand and Naples, after his release from Reading Gaol, where he had been incarcerated for two years after his conviction on charges of gross indecency. The poem reflects his harrowing experiences and observations of the brutal prison system, narrating the execution of trooper Charles Thomas Wooldridge that Wilde had witnessed while imprisoned. It is a poignant critique of the inhumane conditions faced by prisoners, infused with Wilde's characteristic wit and literary style.
The poem was first published by Leonard Smithers on February 13, 1898, with authorship attributed to the name "C.3.3."—meaning Cell Block C, Landing 3, Cell 3—the location of Wilde's confinement. It sold out within a week, and Smithers printed a second anonymized edition of 1,000 copies on February 24, which again sold well. This, the "signed by the author" third edition, was the first to reveal Wilde as its creator—he signs the colophon in full, "Oscar Wilde," though the title page still credits "C. 3. 3." alone. It was not until the seventh edition, released in June 1899, that Wilde's name appeared on the title page. A supremely desirable, ultra-scarce signed example of Wilde's enduring poem, a line from which was chosen as the epitaph on his tomb: 'And alien tears will fill for him, / Pity's long-broken urn, / For his mourners will be outcast men, / And outcasts always mourn.'
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