Description
Book SynopsisServing prison time with hard labor for the crime of gross indecency, Oscar Wilde wrote some of his most powerful works. A savage indictment of society, and testimony to private sufferings, his prison writings illuminated by Nicholas Frankel's notes reveal a different man from the dandy and aesthete who shocked or amused the English-speaking world.
Trade ReviewA welcome gathering of Wilde’s most humane work, with choice illustrations, where the self-proclaimed ‘lord of language’ gives voice to the poor, the disaffected. * Irish Times *
Frankel has…done us a favor to annotate such material with such labor and such learning…Wilde comes out of this volume with all his follies flying as an extraordinarily impressive human being. -- Peter Craven * Sydney Morning Herald *
With headlines of police brutality and judicial immorality as relevant today as back then, creative works which remind audiences of Wilde’s timeless moral principles remain vital. -- John L. Murphy * PopMatters *
De Profundis and
The Ballad of Reading Gaol are canonical Victorian literature, and Frankel’s precise and well-informed notes will raise readers’ awareness of Wilde’s thinking on morality, crime, religion, sexuality, aesthetics, and prison reform. -- Ellis Hanson, Cornell University
Frankel provides a valuable service in comprehensively editing these works for a fresh generation of readers. -- Joseph Bristow, University of California, Los Angeles
