The Ballad of Reading Gaol The Ballad of Reading Gaol The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol () on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. During his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. He was
Ballad of the Goodly Fere offensive. Edward Marsh sought permission to reprint "Fere", which Pound denied because he wished to reprint it himself. T. S. Eliot said that "Fere" showed Pound's "great knowledge of the ballad form". William Butler Yeats said that "Fere" "will last". Ambrose Bierce is said to have "consistently disapproved" the poems of a "young poet", until one came to him which impressed him so much he wore "out the paper and the patience of friends by reading it at them", namely "Fere". Ballad of the Goodly Fere The Ballad of the Goodly Fere is a poem by Ezra Pound, first published