The Ballad of Reading Gaol. London: Leonard Smithers, 1898. First Edition. One of Eight Hundred copies printed on handmade paper. Pp, 31, uncut.  Publisher’s white linen-backed cinnamon cloth by Matthew Bell & Co., light toning to cloth, remains of paper-clip mark to preliminary leaves, otherwise a nice bright copy. [Together With] A second edition. Published in the same year. The two books housed together in a chemise and morocco-backed slipcase, gilt lettered on spine.

Written by Wilde during his exile in France following his imprisonment, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is his last published work and stands as a poignant, searing indictment of the brutality of the Victorian prison system.

The poem recounts the emotions and events surrounding the execution of a fellow prisoner, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, for the murder of his wife. Through its haunting refrain—“each man kills the thing he loves” the ballad transcends its specific subject to become a universal meditation on love, suffering, justice, and shared human experience.

The work was published anonymously under Wilde’s prison cell number, “C.3.3.” though his name was associated with it by the time of the second edition later the same year.

The inclusion of both the rare first edition and a contemporary second edition, housed together in a fine custom slipcase, offers a compelling opportunity for collectors to trace the immediate reception and publication history of this seminal work.