Oscar Wilde Visits Two U.S. Prisons
—Updated from its original posting in 2015—
State penitentiaries are not generally considered tourist destinations.
Yet in a curious twist in Oscar Wilde’s conventional social activity during his lecture tour of North America in 1882, he took the opportunity to visit TWO American state prisons within the space of three days: one during a train stop on his way to lecture in Atchison, KS; and a second (along with its insane asylum) before his next evening lecture in Lincoln, NE.
Did Wilde have a special interest in places of incarceration? Or, aware of his appeal to notoriety, was fate prefiguring for him a life on the inside?
Continue reading “Some Common Prisoner”