De Profundis

Facing charges of indecency and wondering if he should abscond to France, Oscar Wilde finally ended up serving a two-year prison sentence in Reading Gaol. It is during this period that he wrote a 50,000 word letter entitled De Profundis (Latin: "from the depths") to Lord Alfred Douglas, his lover. In the meantime, his love for his lover had turned into a sort of bitterness, and the tone of this long letter manages to capture that bitterness as well as the extraordinary attachment he felt for Douglas.