De Profundis and Other Prison Writings is a new selection of Oscar Wilde's prison letters and
poetry in Penguin Classics edited and introduced by Colm Tóibín. At the start of 1895 Oscar
Wilde was the toast of London widely feted for his most recent stage success An Ideal Husband
. But by May of the same year Wilde was in Reading prison sentenced to hard labour. 'De
Profundis' is an epistolic account of Oscar Wilde's spiritual journey while in prison and
describes his new shocking conviction that 'the supreme vice is shallowness'. This edition
also includes further letters to his wife his friends the Home Secretary newspaper editors
and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas - Bosie - himself as well as 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'
the heart-rending poem about a man sentenced to hang for the murder of the woman he loved.
This Penguin edition is based on the definitive Complete Letters edited by Wilde's grandson
Merlin Holland. Colm Tóibín's introduction explores Wilde's duality in love politics and
literature. This edition also includes notes on the text and suggested further reading. Oscar
Wilde was born in Dublin. His three volumes of short fiction The Happy Prince Lord Arthur
Savile's Crime and A House of Pomegranates together with his only novel The Picture of Dorian
Gray won him a reputation as a writer with an original talent a reputation enhanced by the
phenomenal success of his society comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan A Woman of No Importance
An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest . Colm Tóibín is the author of five
novels including The Blackwater Lightship and The Master and a collection of stories
Mothers and Sons . His essay collection Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar
appeared in 2002. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction .
