Ballad of Reading Jail

Oscar Wilde entered the history of world literature and theater as an extraordinary prose writer, playwright, poet, and essayist. But his creative work began and ended with poetry: in 1878 he won the prestigious Oxford University Prize for the poem "Ravenna," and the last work was the "Ballad of Reading Jail," written shortly after his release from imprisonment in 1897. Wilde effortlessly plays with words and images, creating poetic pictures. In his poems, there are praises of pleasures and calls for compassion, observations of nature and urban life, complex emotions of a vulnerable person, and witty satire.