Oscar Wilde quoted in graffiti on Reading Prison

A new artwork has appeared on the side of Reading Prison, quoting from a poem by its former inmate Oscar Wilde. The Banksy-style artwork, which was not painted by the famous graffiti artist, includes a stanza from The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, written by Wilde following his two-year sentence for gross indecency between 1895 and 1897. During his incarceration – a result of a disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry – Wilde saw a soldier hanged for murder. Wilde wrote about his experience in the autobiographical poem in 1898. He died in Paris in 1900, at just 46 years old. The new graffiti appeared on a wall by the former prison overnight on Friday. Last March a genuine artwork by Banksy on the prison walls was defaced.