Oscar Wilde hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison, he wrote "De Profundis" (published posthumously in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of 46. Oscar Wilde was born at 21
Oscar Wilde and private lives had become sharply divided; in "De Profundis" he wrote to Douglas that "It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement... I did not know that when they were to strike at me it was to be at another's piping and at another's pay." Douglas and some Oxford friends founded a journal, "The Chameleon", to which Wilde "sent a page of paradoxes originally destined for the "Saturday Review"". "" was to come under attack six months later at Wilde's trial, where he was forced to defend the magazine to which he had sent his