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Published by Leonard Smithers, 1899, seventh printing and first to include Wilde's name on title page, original quarter cream cloth, spine lettered in gilt, fawn cloth boards. A robust copy of the last authorized edition published by Smithers; one of 2000 copies..
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand and Naples, after his release from HM Prison Reading on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison
.During his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. He was aged 30 when executed. The book is dedicated, in memoriam, to Woodridge.
The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. This ensured that Wilde's name by then notorious did not appear on the poem's front cover. It was not commonly known, until this 7th printing in June 1899, that C.3.3. was actually Wilde.
So far the book's title page had identified the author only as C.3.3., but this seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3..
The poem brought him a small income for the rest of his life.
