The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Second Edition (issued eleven days after the first). Tall 8vo, pp. [viii], 31, [2]. White linen-backed mustard colour boards, lettered in gilt to spine; fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Printed on rectos only, on hand-made paper, by the Chiswick Press. 1/1000 printed copies. Originally published in a limited edition of 800 copies on hand made, Dutch Van Gelder paper, from a total edition of 830.

Contemporary name on first blank. Lightly tanned to spine; off-setting to free endpapers, else a near fine copy.

A poem consisting of 109 stanzas of 6 lines each, written in exile after Wilde's release from Reading Gaol on 19 May 1897. "C.3.3. had been Wilde's prison name at Reading Gaol, indicating that he occupied Cell 3 on the third landing of Gallery C."

[Mason, 371]