The recital forms part of an ongoing major exhibition inspired by Wilde’s letter. On 16 October, 2016 – 162 years to the date of Wilde’s birth – the Irish novelist Colm Tóibín returns to Wilde’s original cell to read De Profundis aloud. And it was here, in the months before his 1897 release, that Wilde penned what would widely come to be regarded as one of the great letters of the English language, addressed to his lover and betrayer Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas: De Profundis. It was a nightmarish contrast to the high-society success he had sealed through literary and theatrical masterworks such as The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1890) and The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895). It was here, in a stifling cell in C block, that Irish playwright, poet, essayist and iconic wit Oscar Wilde spent two years in isolation from 1895, during his imprisonment for “gross indecency”. The air changes inside, and feels leaden narrow corridors of numbered cells extend in four directions. Stepping into the disused Reading prison is an instantly unsettling experience.
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