Books like De profundis by Oscar Wilde

George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 explores the chilling power of totalitarian regimes, surveillance, and propaganda in a future society.

A comprehensive collection of Oscar Wilde’s plays, from early tragedies to his celebrated comedies, including lesser‑known fragments, offering a rare chance to view his full dramatic output.

A powerful ballad written by Oscar Wilde while imprisoned in Reading Gaol, reflecting on death, imprisonment and the execution of Charles Wooldridge.

Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is a poem originally published anonymously after his two‑year imprisonment, offering a stark reflection on incarceration and the human condition.

Better known for her five volume portrait of English rural life, Our Village, Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) was one of the most prolific female writers of her day. Part critical essay, part autobiography, Recollections consists of a series of sketches on and selections from Mitford's favourite authors, stemming from her desire 'to make others relish a few favourite writers as heartily as I have relished them myself'. The collection is arranged according to Mitford's own eclectic system of categorization including 'fashionable poets', 'cavalier poets', and 'poetry that poets love'. Mitford wears her immense literary skill lightly and Recollections is masterfully written, full of lively wit and fascinating biographical detail. Published just three years before Mitford's death, it was based on earlier articles and letters. Authors included range from Chaucer to Sir Walter Scott and Mitford's friend Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

by the Blessed Father San Juan de la Cruz ; done into English by Gabriela Cunninghame Graham.

A concise collection of D. H. Lawrence’s poems, largely inspired by nature and written as brief lyrical pieces.

Oscar Wilde wrote in almost every form available to him, but he first gained fame and notoriety as a poet. It was as a poet that he became one of the leading lights of the Aesthetic movement, and he continued to write verse to the end of his life—in fact the only major work Wilde published between his release from prison and his death was the long poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” originally published under the pseudonym “C.3.3,” representing the number of his prison cell.

Those who only know Wilde as the witty author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray will see a different Wilde in these poems: by turns reflective, sensuous, romantic and devoutly religious, but always with Wilde’s unerring eye for a telling phrase and his commitment to the ideals of the aesthetic movement, to art and beauty for their own sake.