Oscar Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright or prisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet an unknown and intimate figure.

A powerful poem of universal guilt and a protest against capital punishment.

Originally published in 1898, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is a poem written by Oscar Wilde. Composed after his release from the titular prison whilst he was in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, the poem deals with the hanging at Reading Goal of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a 30-year-old man who was imprisoned for cutting his wife's throat. Within the poem, Wilde narrates the execution in full and explores the brutal nature of the punishment that all inmates must endure. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish poet and playwright who became one of the most popular in London during the 1880s and 1890s. Well-known for his sharp wit and extravagant attire, Wilde was a proponent of aestheticism and wrote in a variety of forms including poetry, fiction, and drama. He was famously imprisoned for homosexual acts from 1895 to 1897 and died at the age of 46, just three years after his release. Other notable works by this author include: “Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890), “Salome” (1891), and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895). Ragged Hand is proudly republishing this classic poem now complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde" by Oscar Wilde. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde contains the following seventeen poems The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, Ave Imperatrix, To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems, Magdalen Walks, Theocritus - A Villanelle, Greece, Portia, Fabien Dei Franchi, Phedre, Sonnet On Hearing The Dies Irae Sung In The Sistine Chapel, Ave Maria Gratia Plena, Libertatis Sacra Fames, Roses And Rue, From 'The Garden Of Eros', The Harlot's House, From 'The Burden Of Itys', Flower of Love. These poems range from early in Wilde's career to his last poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol written about his experience in prison.

Oscar Wilde is one of the most quoted and quotable men in history. He once boasted that he could talk spontaneously on any subject, a claim effortlessly borne out by the range and scope of the examples collected in this book. It is an entertaining, instructive, and revealing look at a man who is unlikely ever to be forgotten. "Oscar Wilde," wrote Richard Ellmann, "we have only to hear the great name to anticipate that what will be quoted as his will surprise and delight us. His wit is an agent of renewal, as pertinent now as a hundred years ago."