De Profundis

"…Prison life makes one see people and things as they really are. That is why it turns one to stone. It is the people outside who are deceived by the illusions of a life in constant motion. They revolve with life and contribute to its unreality. We who are immobile both see and know." -Oscar Wilde (1905)
While in prison from 1895 to 1897 due to his homosexual affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the writer Oscar Wilde wrote a 50,000 word letter to Douglas. Wilde never sent it, but his literary executor Robert Ross edited and published it posthumously in 1905, under the title De Profundis, ("Out of the Depths" in Latin-from Psalm 130, part of the Roman Catholic funeral service.)
De Profundis, considered one of the greatest love letters ever written, is both bitter and loving. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in Oscar Wilde and the paradox of love.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 - 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.