Oscar Wilde renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions. He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of "Melmoth the Wanderer" (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle). Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the "Daily Chronicle", describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform.
William Melmoth his son did so in 1797. However, the work sold exceptionally well, having a staggering thirty editions by 1797 and selling 420,000 copies between 1766 and 1784 alone. Melmoth wrote pamphlets and short works for publication, anonymously, throughout his public life, but he was only an occasional author. In 1719, he was made a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn and was soon recognised as one of the leading chancery counsel of the day. He devoted considerable energies to the physical and financial improvement of the Inn and continued to work up until a few days before his death on 6 April