Written from Wilde's prison cell at Reading Gaol to his friend and lover Lord Alfred Douglas
De Profundis explodes the conventions of the traditional love letter and offers a scathing indictment of Douglas's behavior a mournful elegy for Wilde's own lost greatness and an impassioned plea for reconciliation. At once a bracingly honest account of ruinous attachment and a profound meditation on human suffering
De Profundis is a classic of gay literature. Richard Ellmann calls
De Profundis "a love letter...One of the greatest and the longest ever written."
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains newly commissioned notes.[]
