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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 26, 1919
The New Appeal Book Department Publishes Oscar Wilde’s “Reading Jail”
From The New Appeal of February 22, 1919:
Greatest Prison Poem Ever Written
Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Jail” Has Just
Been Published by The New Appeal Book Department
“The Ballad of Reading Jail” [first published in 1898] will live as long as the English language. It is the greatest prison poem ever penned. This soul-stirring masterpiece of literature is the most overwhelming argument ever aimed against the terrible evil of capital punishment.
“The Ballad of Reading Jail” was written while Oscar Wilde was in a prison cell. One of the prisoners, sentenced to hang, and finally executed, so moved Wilde to the depths that he was inspired to write this ballad.
This poetical classic is the first of The New Appeal’s Pocket Series. We have printed this poem on fine book paper and have bound it handsomely. It is printed in a convenient form so that you will be able to slip it into your pocket and read it on the street car during your lunch hour or during any spare moments when you will want something that will be of more use to you than the usual trash with which one whiles away his time. A poem like this is not read once or twice. Those who know this tremendous masterpiece have it within reach so that they may return to it time and time again. By publishing this long, readable poem in this simple, bulkless from we enable you to carry it with you without bulging your pockets.
Oscar Wilde was a genius. Whatever may be said about him, no one has ever questioned his mastery of the English language and his ability to express the deepest emotions in the simplest, most compelling, manner conceivable.
The average workingman doesn’t feel able to pay a dollar for a de luxe edition of a single poem. That’s why The New Appeal Book Dept. has decided to issue “The Ballad of Reading Jail” neatly but cheaply. We send you a copy of this great work of poetry for only 25 cents; 5 copies for $1. An ideal gift for your friends-and a gift they will appreciate even though the money value is trifling. Order five copies. You will then be able to bring real literature to your friends and yourself.
[Photograph of Oscar Wilde added.]
From The Vancouver (British Columbia) Daily World of May 18, 1898:
READING JAIL.
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A Powerful Poem Said to Have Been
Written by Oscar Wilde.He was a trooper in the Blues, says the London Daily Chronicle. He murdered his mistress, was tried, hanged as the law directs and buried in prison. It was quite an ordinary case. There was no psychological interest in it, no dramatic complexity. These things happen and pass; we see them in the newspapers, we turn the leaf and forget all about them. Yet on that common little tragedy a fellow-prisoner, who calls himself “C.3.3,” has founded an almost terrific indictment against our common dealings with the criminal. The Ballad of Reading Jail is a poem whose authority it is not difficult to detect, though the poet’s style is simpler, more straightforward, and in this case more grim than it used to be…..
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SOURCES
Quote Oscar Wilde, Poem Reading Goal p25, London 1898
https://archive.org/details/readinggballadof00wildrich/page/n59
The New Appeal
(Girard, Kansas)
-Feb 22, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587263/
The Vancouver Daily World
(Vancouver, British Columbia)
-May 18, 1898
https://www.newspapers.com/image/62953143/
Read full article here:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/838487/oscar_wilde_the_ballad_of_reading_jail/
IMAGE
Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony, 1882
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
See also:
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
-by C. 3. 3.
London, 1898
https://archive.org/details/readinggballadof00wildrich/page/n7
Note: Sadly I could not find, online, “Oscar’s Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Jail” as published by the Appeal Publishing Company, altho many ads for same were found in the Appeal and in various magazines from 1919-1922. Below, find link to 1904 edition:
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
-by Oscar Wilde
Maine, 1904
https://archive.org/details/balladofreadingg00wildrich
Oscar Wilde
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
Re Wilde’s Trials and Imprisonment re Homosexuality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Trials
Re 2017 Posthumous Pardon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Posthumous_pardon
Re The Ballad of Reading Goal by Oscar Wilde:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Reading_Gaol
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