Among the humiliations Wilde suffered after being sent to prison were not only compulsory silence - prisoners were forbidden to speak to one another - but deprivation of books. All he had in his cell at Pentonville, apart from his bed (a plank laid across two trestles), were a Bible, a prayer book and a hymnal. When at last his sympathetic MP won him permission to have more books, Wilde nominated Pater's The Renaissance along with the works of Flaubert and some by Cardinal Newman. These were allowed, but only at the rate of one a week. Moved to Reading Gaol, he found himself under a more sympathetic prison governor. His book request lists after July 1896 show him developing an interest in more recently published titles, including novels by George Meredith and Thomas Hardy. Wilde later said that he also read Dante every day in prison and that Dante had saved his reason.from Brenda Maddox's review of Thomas Wright's Oscar's Books
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Dante for Reason
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2 comments:
See... Oscar Wilde, there's someone else I've been meaning to read.
Other than The Selfish Giant (a short fairy tale) I've read no Wilde. I did get to see his tomb in Pere Lachaise, though. Eventually I'll get around to reading Joseph Pearce's bio of him and then select something of Oscar's. There is just so much good stuff to read!
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