Oscar Wilde first hanging at Reading in 18 years. From Wooldridge's hanging, Wilde later wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol". Wilde was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books and writing materials. Wilde requested, among others: the Bible in French; Italian and German grammars; some Ancient Greek texts, Dante's "Divine Comedy", Joris-Karl Huysmans's new French novel about Christian redemption "En Route", and essays by St Augustine, Cardinal Newman and Walter Pater. Between January and March 1897 Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas. He was not allowed to send it, but was
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