De Profundis
by Oscar Wilde
- Length
- 8 mornings, about 2,200 words a reading
About the book
De Profundis comes from a long letter Oscar Wilde wrote in Reading Gaol between January and March 1897, near the end of a two-year prison sentence. In 1895, at the height of his success as a playwright, he had been convicted of gross indecency, the charge then brought against sex between men. The letter was addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas, but this is the shorter selection that Wilde’s literary executor, Robert Ross, published in 1905, five years after Wilde’s death. Ross left out the passages about Douglas, so the letter’s recipient is never named here.
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One reading every morning by 6am ET, for 8 mornings. Enter your email and we’ll send a link to confirm it. Your welcome email comes as soon as you confirm, and day 1 the next morning. A book you’ve stopped before picks up where you left off instead.
