The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde

by Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (Editor)

"And I? May I say nothing, my lord?" With these words, Oscar Wilde's courtroom trials came to a close. The lord in question, High Court justice Sir Alfred Wills, sent Wilde to the cells, sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor for the crime of "gross indecency" with other men. As cries of "shame" emanated from the gallery, the convicted aesthete was roundly silenced.

But he did not remain so. Behind bars and in the period immediately after his release, Wilde wrote two of his most powerful works--the long autobiographical letter De Profundis and an expansive best-selling poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. In The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel collects these and other prison writings, accompanied by historical illustrations and his rich facing-page annotations. As Frankel shows, Wilde experienced prison conditions designed to break even the toughest spirit, and yet his writings from this period display an imaginative and verbal brilliance left largely intact. Wilde also remained politically steadfast, determined that his writings should inspire improvements to Victorian England's grotesque regimes of punishment. But while his reformist impulse spoke to his moment, Wilde also wrote for eternity.

At once a savage indictment of the society that jailed him and a moving testimony to private sufferings, Wilde's prison writings--illuminated by Frankel's extensive notes--reveal a very different man from the famous dandy and aesthete who shocked and amused the English-speaking world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, Queer, LGBT, Essays, Biography, Writing

408 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my review of Frankel's _Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde_ in the journal _Textual Cultures_. The journal is open access, so anyone should be able to read what I've written: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/....

Thanks to Logan Esdale for all of his great work as book review editor for _Textual Cultures_!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars

"Suffering is one long moment... For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow."

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?"

This volume was completely fascinating from beginning to end. Reading this, I felt that I was seeing a completely different side of Wilde: not as a carefree dandy, but as a man who endured real pain and suffering. The majority of the book is taken up by "De Profundis", Wilde's long letter to his former lover Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"). That piece, in particular, struck me as incredibly profound and heartbreaking. The two quotes I have above are taken from it, and I wrote down so many more so that I could come back to them later. The much shorter letters to the Daily Chronicle are just as interesting, as they blatantly depict the horrible conditions of English prisons at the time. The poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" provides a more metaphorical and symbolic interpretation of the conditions that surround prisoners, with the added narrative of a man sentenced to be hanged. (I guess 'gaol' is pronounced 'jail', at first I thought it was just some fancy word!) It all goes to show that even the torture that was the Victorian prison couldn't keep Wilde's artistic spirit down for good. As in the annotated Dorian Gray that I recently read, Nicholas Frankel provides excellent notes. Reading them parallel to the text enhanced my reading. I felt like I learned a lot! Definitely a great way to learn more about Oscar Wilde's prison years and later life.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

De Profundis begins with an outpouring of all of Wilde’s hurts, resentments, bitterness, shame, love, anger, etc at his situation.—Who can blame him, really? It was his only way to truly vent those frustrations. He calls out “Bosie” in brutal terms for not writing to him, for taking advantage of him, and for throwing him under the bus in some cases. It’s all very raw and emotional, at times maybe even a tiny bit petty. Many of my annotations were just the word “brutal” haha. But what I love is that eventually the narrative develops into more than just the venting of grievances and gradually we see Wilde truly healing.
My favorite example is to see how his assessment changes on one particular incident:

You [Bosie] concluded your letter by saying: “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.”…how often have those words come back to me in the wretched solitary cell…For you to write thus to me, when the very illness and fever from which I was suffering I had caught from tending you, was, of course, revolting in its coarseness and crudity.

Here we can see how he is still hurting. How he maybe still valued how Bosie saw him and thought of him. Compared to much later in his letter when talking about being held before the public to laugh and leer at him:

Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal. I was in the pillory. But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals…I have said that behind sorrow there is always Sorrow. It were still wiser to say that behind sorrow there is a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. Unbeautiful are their lives who do it.

I think this is an example of what he meant when he said that he is taking all the bad that has happened to him and turning it into good. He gave all that hurt, resentment, bitterness, shame, and anger a sense of meaning. In that, he is gaining even more compassion, understanding, and empathy. And his perspective on things shows growth.

He, eventually, accounts for his role in how things happened, admits he had everything a man could ask for and yet dug for the depths in wanting more, but now, No matter what, he is accepting what has happened and is seeking to make a better person of himself, to let go of bitterness and resentment, and to forgive. At first, I admit I was skeptical, but I began to see his point— that by taking the bad and making it good he is giving what happened purpose and meaning and adapting and surviving and living on without letting it all crush his soul and humanity. This gave me perspective on my own traumas and I’m so glad to have access to something that is this special, and yet, was never really meant for the public’s eyes— by pouring out his own soul, he might not have realized how many souls he’s been able to touch and to help heal.

I suppose this review is mostly for De Profundis which is the bulk of this compilation of writings, but the other pieces are wonderful as well and I appreciate his writings to newspapers and publications about what can be done for the prison system. Even now, people don’t speak out enough about these types of continuing issues. He was ahead of his time.

[Crocat · Rating 4 out of 5]

These letters are, I think, one of the best insights into the mind of Oscar Wilde that exist to this day. At prison, he seems to have been at his most vulnerable, most bitter, but also most reflective, showing the usually more hidden depths of his personality. They have made me even more certain that he really had a gift for words (especially the eerie Ballad of Reading Gaol), but they've also shown me that while he seems a deeply compassionate and sensitive person, his ego is... Grand, to say the least. The insults he hurled at Alfred Douglas were so pedantic and long-winded that I had trouble getting though the bulk of them.

The book itself is given out in a nice, helpful way. The footnotes and such were at times very clarifying, at times interesting, and at times felt entirely useless and a drag to get through. For a scholar, I imagine they would be of utmost importance, but I abandoned them entirely by the end.

[Susannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant edition of Oscar Wilde’s prison writings, containing De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol which I have read before as well as the two letters that Wilde wrote to the Daily Chronicle after he was released to help campaign against the prison conditions which I had not read before.

As well as the quality of the writing which is excellent, De Profundis in particular is one of the best things Wilde wrote, this edition is particularly good for the notes which give context and further information on what is written to help with understanding the text. I would highly recommend this edition for Oscar Wilde fans.

[Wilder Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are parts of De Profundis that broke me wide open. I truly love Oscar Wilde and feel connected to his writings. He is the world's greatest wordsmith and we are lucky to have access to so much of his writings.

[Chiara Niamh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece for any Oscar's lover!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilde had me completely heartbroken throughout most of this book. He shares so many anecdotes that rang true for me personally

[Mills College Library]

828.8 W672p 2018