Overview

Written during his time in Reading jail, De Profundis is Oscar Wilde's moving letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde led to the poet's imprisonment. Here Wilde repudiates Lord Alfred and reflects on his ordeal, acknowledging how the depths of his sorrow have helped liberate him towards a fuller, freer wisdom. Brimming with beautiful passages, De Profundis is a profound and inspiring treatise on the meaning of suffering, and is introduced by Wilde's only grandchild, Merlin Holland.

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9781094015590

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"""Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life...Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions...Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award."" -- ""AudioFile"" ""Displays the insight, honesty, and unselfconscious style of a great writer."" -- ""W. H. Auden, Anglo-American poet"""

Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life...Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions...Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile Displays the insight, honesty, and unselfconscious style of a great writer. -- W. H. Auden, Anglo-American poet

De Profundis (From the Depths) is perhaps the least read of Wilde's major works, and the most heartbreakingly sincere. Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life. The tone is sometimes bitter but always striving toward love as Wilde tries to explain his situation: he wrote the work from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, the lover who bore so much responsibility for the writer's imprisonment for homosexuality. Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions as Wilde moves from castigating Douglas to discussing suffering as the path to Christian love to expressing his hope of meeting Douglas again after his release. Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile Displays the insight, honesty, and unselfconscious style of a great writer. -- W. H. Auden, Anglo-American poet

De Profundis (From the Depths) is perhaps the least read of Wilde's major works, and the most heartbreakingly sincere. Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life. The tone is sometimes bitter but always striving toward love as Wilde tries to explain his situation: he wrote the work from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, the lover who bore so much responsibility for the writer's imprisonment for homosexuality. Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions as Wilde moves from castigating Douglas to discussing suffering as the path to Christian love to expressing his hope of meeting Douglas again after his release. Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile Displays the insight, honesty, and unselfconscious style of a great writer. -- W. H. Auden, Anglo-American poet

Displays the insight, honesty, and unselfconscious style of a great writer. -- W. H. Auden, Anglo-American poet De Profundis (From the Depths) is perhaps the least read of Wilde's major works, and the most heartbreakingly sincere. Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, delivers his own moving introduction, and Simon Beale narrates the book-length letter as though he were talking about his own life. The tone is sometimes bitter but always striving toward love as Wilde tries to explain his situation: he wrote the work from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas, the lover who bore so much responsibility for the writer's imprisonment for homosexuality. Beale manages the difficult emotional transitions as Wilde moves from castigating Douglas to discussing suffering as the path to Christian love to expressing his hope of meeting Douglas again after his release. Beale never lets the leaps seem strained or unnatural. This is a reading that the work deserves. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile

Author Information

"Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin. He won scholarships to both Trinity College, Dublin, and Magdalen College, Oxford. After publishing two volumes of short stories between 1887 and 1891, his social-comedy plays such as Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest established his critical and commercial success. In 1895 Wilde was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for homosexual conduct and died in Paris in obscurity a few years after his release. Simon Russell Beale is a multiaward-winning actor of stage and television, ""the greatest stage actor of his generation"" (London Independent), and an Earphones Award-winning narrator. Christopher Merlin Vyvyan Holland is a biographer and editor and is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde."

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