The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein might be accepted by readers with no vested interest in the issue, it would be "vehemently rejected out of hand" by the "literary establishment". Sadownick wrote that Lauritsen confirmed his view that "Frankenstein" is a gay work in the same sense as Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" (1855) and Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1897), and offered a commendable psychological analysis, and a sensitive line-by-line reading, of the work. Charles E. Robinson rejected Lauritsen's thesis in "The Original Frankenstein" (2008), arguing that the testimony of authors such as Lord Byron, William Godwin, Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Leigh
Charles Thomas Wooldridge to be carried out. On the morning of the execution Wooldridge attended a service in the prison chapel, showed repentance for his terrible crime and was resigned to his fate. Because of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" Wooldridge became the most famous person ever to be executed at Reading. The executioner was James Billington, whose use of a drop longer than specified by the official Table of Drops stretched Wooldridge's neck by eleven inches. He was aged 30 when executed. Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol when Wooldridge was hanged there on Saturday 7 July 1896; the two never met