The Ballad of Reading Gaol the poem was chosen as the epitaph on Wilde's tomb; <poem>And alien tears will fill for him, For his mourners will be outcast men, <poem>So with curious eyes and sick surmise We watched him day by day, And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, For none can tell to what red Hell His sightless soul may stray.</poem> 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
Culture of Reading, Berkshire from 1895 to 1897. While he was there, he wrote "De Profundis", which was published in 1905. After his release, he lived in exile in France and wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", based on his experience of an execution carried out in Reading Gaol whilst he was imprisoned there. It was first published in 1898 under the pseudonym C.3.3, Wilde's erstwhile cell number. Other authors lived in and around Reading. Jane Austen attended Reading Ladies Boarding School, based in the Abbey Gateway, in 1784–86. Mary Russell Mitford lived in Reading for a number of years and then spent the