De Profundis

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De Profundis

"I thought life was going to be a brilliant comedy, and you were to be one of the many graceful figures in it." While imprisoned in 1895-7 for "gross indecency", the brilliant poet and playwright Oscar Wilde wrote a long, impassioned letter to his estranged young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Later published as De Profundis, Wilde's letter describes the unbearable pains and blissful pleasures of his love, as well as his views on art, Christianity, and incarceration. Heavily abridged in most editions, De Profundis is here reproduced in full - a telling insight into this charismatic and sensitive author's life and times.
De Profundis and Other Writings

'I have nothing to declare,' Wilde once told an American customs official, 'except my genius.' A good part of that genius is evident in the essays and poems included in this volume. There is the intellectual genius of The Soul of Man under Socialism, in which he clearly foresaw the dangers of economic bureaucracy and state-worship: for Wilde socialism meant liberation and individuality, not enslavement. Then there is the emotional genius of De Profundis, the long, introspective and often hostile letter he addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. And there is the poetical genius of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in which Wilde's generous nature could movingly express for another's misery the sorrow he found it hard to express for his own. This collection contains, too, many examples of that humorous and epigrammic genius which captured the London theatre and which, by suddenly casting light from an unexpected angle, widened the bounds of truth.
De Profundis

Contains De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, The Soul of Man under Socialism, The Decay of Lying and The Critic as Artist.