page_title: Culture of Reading, Berkshire
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of Reading, Berkshire / Literature
caption_attribution_description: English: HM Prison Reading Built in 1844 and immortalised by Oscar Wilde in his Ballad of Reading Gaol. He wrote De Profundis whilst serving his sentence here from 1895 to 1897. Today it houses young offenders. For more information see Reading (HM Prison).
context_page_description: Reading is a town in the English county of Berkshire.
context_section_description: Reading's best known literary connection is with Oscar Wilde, who was imprisoned in Reading Gaol from 1895 to 1897. While he was there, he wrote De Profundis, which was published in 1905. After his release, he lived in exile in France and wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, based on his experience of an execution carried out in Reading Gaol whilst he was imprisoned there. It was first published in 1898 under the pseudonym C.3.3, Wilde's erstwhile cell number.
  Other authors lived in and around Reading. Jane Austen attended Reading Ladies Boarding School, based in the Abbey Gateway, in 1784–86. Mary Russell Mitford lived in Reading for a number of years and then spent the rest of her life just outside the town at Three Mile Cross and Swallowfield. Thomas Noon Talfourd, the judge and dramatist was born in Reading and later became MP for the town.
  Blessed Dominic of the Mother of God, born Dominic Barberi (22 June 1792 - 27 August 1849), an Italian theologian and author, died in Reading. On 27 August 1849 he was travelling from London to Woodchester when, at Pangbourne, he suffered a heart attack. On being taken to the Railway Tavern at Reading (later the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, now demolished) he died after being given absolution. He was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1963.
  Several authors have written about Reading. Thomas Hardy painted a rather disparaging picture of the town, lightly disguised as Aldbrickham, in his 1895 novel Jude the Obscure. Jerome K. Jerome also did not warm to the town on his famous journey up the Thames in Three Men in a Boat (1888). He does, however, recognise the historical significance of Reading. Jasper Fforde set his series of Jack Spratt literary crime novels in this town. The comic novel A Melon for Ecstasy by John Fortune and John Wells is set in and around Reading.
  T. E. Lawrence lost the first draft of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom at Reading railway station. Charles Dickens was asked to stand as MP for Reading, but declined. He became president of the Reading Athenaeum. In his novel Bleak House, Esther Summerson goes to school in Reading. His great-granddaughter Monica Dickens died in Reading in 1992.
  Patrick Hamilton set his 1953 novel, Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse, in Reading.
caption: Reading Gaol, one-time home to Oscar Wilde
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