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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.

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