Oscar Wilde asks Robert Ross for books to await him on his release, in a letter of 1897

“I am terrified for myself, for I shall go out into the world without a single book.
My one hope is in my friends… You know which authors I need: Flaubert, Stevenson, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, Dumas père, Keats, Marlowe, Chatterton, Coleridge, Anatole France, Gautier, Dante and the literature about him, Goethe and about him, and so on. I should be immeasurably glad if something of this were waiting for me after my release; perhaps there will be friends who will not refuse.”

From a letter of Oscar Wilde to Robert Ross. Her Majesty’s Prison, Reading. 6 April 1897

Illustration: Timur Novikov

Report a translation error

September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Oscar Wilde asks Robert Ross for books to await him on his release, in a letter of 1897

Read more

September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s