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Poetry Please

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Roger McGough introduces selections of poetry on various themes, chosen by listeners.

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Poetry Please: The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

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07/10/2012

The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

BBC Radio 4 - Poetry Please, The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde

Roger McGough presents Alex Jennings reading Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, read by Alex Jennings. Presented by Roger McGough.

In May 1897 Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol. That month he began to write The Ballad of Reading Gaol - to express his horror and outrage at what he had witnessed during his years in prison. The poem memorialises a fellow prisoner, who was hanged for murder in 1896. 

Wilde wrote it in exile in Dieppe, then Naples. He finished it in October that same year, and it was published the following year, 1898. The author's name was given simply as C. 3. 3., Wilde's number in Reading Gaol, his cell being the third on the third floor of Block C. 

Producer Beth O'Dea.

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