A Poet in Prison: conversations between Oscar Wilde and Thomas Martin at Reading Gaol

Abstract

This study examines the circumstances that led Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) to imprisonment for the crime of gross indecency and provides the translation of a collection of materials related to his stay at Reading Gaol (1895-97). These materials comprise five messages that Wilde secretly exchanged with Thomas Martin, a prison warder with whom he formed a friendship during his incarceration, as well as a lengthy essay by Martin himself recounting his experience with the writer. These messages, preserved as fragments of paper at the University of California and at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles, are translated here into Portuguese for the first time, with the authorisation of Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson and literary executor. Martin’s essay, in turn, is a contribution he made to Robert Sherard’s (1861-1943) biographical works on Wilde, and, to the best of my knowledge, is also translated into Portuguese here for the first time. The aim of this study and of the selected materials is to provide a renewed perspective in Brazil on Oscar Wilde and on his life between 1895 and 1897, the years in which he experienced both familial and public ruin and a bleak existence within the confines of a prison cell.