The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
BY C. 3. 3. OSCAR. WILDE.
A poem of more than 600 lines, dedicated to the memory of a trooper of the Horse Guards who was hanged in Reading Gaol during the poet's confinement there. An English classic.
PRESS COMMENTS.
Albany Press: "One of the greatest poems of the century, a permanent addition to English literature. It may be read in a few moments, but the impression left by that reading will abide in every sensitive mind for many years. It is the best Lenten and Easter sermon of the year."
The Conservator: "A poem torn, dragged, from one bleeding heart, destined to reawaken in men a large respect for man—a poem bloodred with transfiguring democracy—a poem making vocal at fast and adequately a tragic overshadowing wrong."
Brooklyn Citizen: "It may well be questioned whether anything equalling it in originality of strain and vividness—we had almost said luridness—of coloring has been produced in recent days."
Chicago Evening Post: "There has never been a more convincing argument brought against capital punishment, and nothing that has disclosed to the world outside the thought of the criminals within the walls of a prison."
Town Topics: "It is one of those ballads of to-day, one of those strong voices of the time, not unfit to rank with Mr. Kipling's 'Vampire' or Charles Edwin Markham's 'The Man with the Hoe'— that no man may easily forget nor easily refrain from being haunted by."
Pittsburg Leader: " Whatever the poem may lack, a fearful genuineness it has. In the naked simplicity of its gruesome details, in the effortless bald relation of frightful sensations, in the haunting shiver of horror that runs through it from the first line to the last, it recalls the ballade epitaph by François Villon, written for himself and his companions about to he hanged."
Chicago Times-Herald: "It is a lyric of unmistakable quality, and will not easily be dislodged from its unique niche in literature. It is, more than anything else, a plea for the divine quality of poetry, which, oftener than any other form of expression, betrays the angel of man's higher nature masquerading in leprous flesh."
Chicago Inter-Ocean: "In reading 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' we are reminded of Hood's fine poem of 'Eugene Aram,' both through resemblance in topic and in metre, and must admit that this is much the stronger poem of the two,"
Cloth, $1.00; Paper, 10 Cents.
The cloth edition has covers of blue and vellum, and is beautifully printed from large type on hand-made antique deckle-edge paper. It is a sumptuous book of 96 pages, and should be in every library.
Mailed, post-paid, by the Publisher,
BENJ. R. TUCKER, Box 1312, New York City.
