THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL & OTHER POEMS

New York: The Peter Pauper Press, c. 1940. First Edition Thus. Illustrated throughout with wood engravings by Hans Alexander Mueller. 8vo, decorated boards with overall patterned design in purple and green, lettered on the spine, and housed in the slipcase with paste down title label. 93 pp. A fine and well-preserved copy, with extremely minor overall age mellowing to the exterior. BEAUTIFULLY BOUND AND ILLUSTRATED WITH THE WONDERFUL ARTWORK OF HANS ALEXANDER MUELLER. Inspired by his experiences while in prison and written while in exile in France, THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL was Wilde's last artistic gasp. Because of his sobering position at the time, the poem is free from a great deal of the affectation that colored his earlier work. "Had [it] been written a hundred years ago, it would have been printed as a broadside and sold in the streets by the balladmongers; it is so common as that, and so great as that" (Jackson, The Eighteen-Nineties, p. 99).

"...He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning sun.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!....