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,
is a classic of gay literature. Richard Ellmann calls
"a love letter...One of the greatest, and the longest, ever written."
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains newly commissioned notes.