His downfall came after an ill thought out libel prosecution of the Marquess of Queensbury which resulted in evidence of Oscar Wilde's homosexuality being discovered. In classic British tradition he was lauded for his literary brilliance, built up and summarily brought crashing down to earth in the most public humiliation possible. Haldane managed to convince the governor to allow him access to books and writing materials.Īdvertise on Quoteikon, click image for details Oscar was doing time in Reading Gaol when his friend the MP and reformer Richard B. Strange and beautiful it seemed to me that the sorrow of a single Florentine in exile should, hundreds of years afterwards, lighten the sorrow of some common prisoner in a modern gaol."įast forward fourteen years and the same book by Dante would prove a mental lifeline for Wilde as he was half way through his own prison sentence of two years hard labour. He was somewhat fixated on cell detail and seemed gleefully surprised to say: "In one I found a translation of Dante, and a Shelley. on a lucrative lecture tour, wrote a letter sharing his penal observations to his friend the suffragette Helena Sickert. The following day Wilde, who was travelling through the U.S. He described the inmates as "odd types of humanity" and went on to call them "all mean looking". The visitor was an impeccably dressed Irishman called Oscar Wilde. Two days later, after giving his lecture in Lincoln he visited the State Penitentiary Nebraska. On the 22nd April 1882 a curious visitor, dressed like a dandy, strode into the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing.
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