At the start of 1895, Oscar Wilde was the toast of London: a member of the social and intellectual elite, he was widely feted for his most recent stage success, An Ideal Husband. But by May of the same year, Wilde was in prison, bankrupt and with his reputation in ruins. 'De Profundis' is the astonishing letter he wrote to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, from prison; Colm Tóibín describes it as Wilde's 'greatest piece of prose-writing'. Also included in this volume is 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', as well as other letters revealing to the wider world what prison really did to its inmates.