The Portrait of Mr W.H.

This Penguin 60 contains two short stories taken from The Complete Short Fiction of Oscar Wilde. The first is the titular story, the second is The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. tells the story of the “Mr. W.H” to which Shakespeare's Sonnets are dedicated. And is a story woven around a hoax by a third party where a painting is produced with a portrait of a Mr Willie Hughes, and a copy of the sonnets open on the dedication page.

Contains the line: “...and once read a paper before our debating society to prove that it was better to be good-looking than to be good.”

The Ballad of Reading Gaol was written by Wilde just after his release from Reading Gaol, where he had served a two year hard labour sentence for gross indecency with other men in 1895.
During his imprisonment, a hanging took place - Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen. He was aged 30 when executed.

I am not one for poetry, so skimmed over it fairly quickly.

3 stars.