Letters of Oscar Wilde, Volume 4 (1897-1898)

These are the letters of a man who has lost everything and is, somehow, finding his voice again. Written in the year after Wilde's release from prison, this collection captures the great wit and provocateur at his most vulnerable and honest. We find him in a small cottage in Berneval, trying to write, trying to exist in a world that has cast him out, then in Naples sharing a villa with Lord Alfred Douglas, the lover who helped undo him. The letters to Robert Ross and publisher Leonard Smithers reveal the gestation of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', Wilde's unflinching meditation on capital punishment and human dignity that would become his most enduring work. There is also a devastating letter to the Daily Chronicle, documenting the systematic cruelties of prison life that no one wanted to hear. These are not the epigrams of the salon or the defenses of the courtroom. These are the private words of a ruined man still reaching toward beauty and meaning, sometimes petty, often luminous, always unbearably human.