SELECTED POEMS
OF OSCAR WILDE

INCLUDING

THE BALLAD OF
READING GAOL

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

‘The Ballad of Reading Goal’ was first published by Leonard Smithers, February 13th, 1898.  Second Edition, February, 1898.  Third Edition, March 1898.  Fourth Edition, March 1898.  Fifth Edition, March 1898.  Sixth Edition, 1898.  Seventh Edition, 1899.  Eighth and Cheaper Edition (1s. net).  Methuen & Co., Ltd., August 1910.  Ninth Edition, September 1910.  ‘The Ballad of Reading Goal’ was published anonymously under the signature of C. 3. 3.  The author’s name first appeared on the title-page of the Seventh Edition.  It was included in the Collected Edition of the author’s Poems published by Messrs. Methuen in 1908 and 1909.

Wilde’s Poems were first published in volume form in 1881, and were reprinted four times before the end of 1882.  A new edition with additional poems, including Ravenna, The Sphinx, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, was first published (limited issues on hand-made paper and Japanese vellum) by Methuen & Co. in March 1908.  A further edition (making the seventh) with some omissions from the issue of 1908, but including two new poems, was published in September 1909.  Eighth Edition, November 1909.  Ninth Edition, December 1909.

PREFACE

It is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde’s early verses may be of interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always popular Ballad of Reading Gaol, also included in this volume.  The poems were first collected by their author when he was twenty-sex years old, and though never, until recently, well received by the critics, have survived the test of NINE editions.  Readers will be able to make for themselves the obvious and striking contrasts between these first and last phases of Oscar Wilde’s literary activity.  The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose, fiction, essays, and criticism.

ROBERT ROSS

Reform Club,
      April 5, 1911.

CONTENTS