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
The Big Ballad Jamboree The Big Ballad Jamboree The Big Ballad Jamboree is a novel by the American writer Donald Davidson, written in the 1950s and published posthumously in 1996. The story is set in the summer of 1949 in southwestern North Carolina. It follows the romance between Danny MacGregor, a hillbilly music singer, and Cissy Timberlake, a folk-music scholar and former singer. The novel's principal theme is the conflict between tradition and commercial prospects. Davidson was best known as a poet and "The Big Ballad Jamboree" was his only novel. "Publishers Weekly's" critic wrote: "the novel places a comic spin on the serious