Oscar Wilde’s prison cell key goes up for auction

Iron key was used to lock Reading jail cell C.3.3 where writer was imprisoned for homosexual offences

The plain iron key to Oscar Wilde’s cell door at Reading jail, a macabre souvenir of the period that broke his health and spirit, is to be sold at a Sotheby’s auction.

One of his most famous poems, the Ballad of Reading Gaol, recounting the sulphurous atmosphere in the prison in the weeks before a man was hanged, was originally published in 1898 under the pseudonym C.3.3, the number of his cell – cell block C, landing 3, cell 3 – where he was locked up after being sentenced to two years’ hard labour for homosexual offences in 1895.