De Profundis

In 1895 Oscar Wilde was at the height of his fame; within months he was a convicted prisoner, sentenced to two years' hard labour. De Profundis comes from the long letter he wrote in Reading Gaol in 1897, published after his death in 1905 by his friend Robert Ross. It is part confession, part essay on art and religion, and one of the most remarkable documents in English literature.

Wilde writes about pleasure and its limits, about the value of sorrow, about humility, about Shakespeare, Dante and the Greek traditions he loved, and about Christ as the supreme artist of sympathy and imagination. He describes the losses and humiliations of prison and looks ahead to the life and work he hopes for after his release. Readers interested in Wilde, in Victorian literature, in prison writing or in the literature of self-examination will find much here.

This edition contains De Profundis in the text first published in 1905, which omits the personal passages addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas. It also includes a new introduction for first-time readers, a guide to the key ideas, a summary, a discussion of its themes, a glossary, and questions for discussion in book clubs and classrooms.