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'Yet each man kills the thing he loves.' In 109 six-line stanzas, Oscar Wilde describes the last weeks of a fellow prisoner in Reading Gaol, a young trooper…
'Yet each man kills the thing he loves.' In 109 six-line stanzas, Oscar Wilde describes the last weeks of a fellow prisoner in Reading Gaol, a young trooper, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, who had murdered his wife and was hanged in July 1896. The poem follows the prisoners as they watch the condemned man walking in the yard, their sleepless night before the execution and the quicklime grave within the prison walls, and becomes a cry against the cruelty of the prison system itself.
Context and significance
Wilde wrote it in France after his release from two years' hard labour for 'gross indecency', and it was published in 1898 under the name C.3.3., his cell number. It was the last work he wrote; he died in Paris two years later. Read it with De Profundis, his letter from prison, and see his life.
About the author
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was born in Dublin, studied classics at Trinity College and Oxford, and became the most quotable man in London, the leading voice of the movement that preached art for art's sake. Between 1892 and 1895 his comedies filled the theatres, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, caused a sensation.
At the height of his fame he was convicted for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and sentenced to two years of hard labour, an experience he wrote about in De Profundis. He died in exile in Paris, poor and broken, at forty-six. The Importance of Being Earnest remains one of the funniest plays in English.