Reading, Berkshire the Obscure, as the temporary home of Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol from 1895 to 1897. While there, he wrote his letter "De Profundis". After his release, he lived in exile in France and wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", based on his experience of the execution of Charles Wooldridge, carried out in Reading Gaol whilst he was imprisoned there. Ricky Gervais, who is from Reading, made the film "Cemetery Junction", which, although filmed elsewhere in the UK, is set in 1970s Reading and is named after a busy junction in East Reading.
Ballad of the Goodly Fere Ballad of the Goodly Fere The Ballad of the Goodly Fere is a poem by Ezra Pound, first published in 1909. The narrator is Simon Zelotes, speaking after the Crucifixion about his memories of Jesus (the "goodly fere"—Old English for "companion"—of the title). Pound wrote the poem as a direct response to what he considered inappropriately effeminate portrayals of Jesus, comparing Jesus—a "man o' men"—to "capon priest(s)"; he subsequently told "T.P.'s Weekly" that he had "been made very angry by a certain sort of cheap irreverence". Charles Elkin Mathews expressed his concerns that readers would find "Fere"s humanization of Jesus