The British Library has reissued a reader’s card in Oscar Wilde’s name, 130 years after it was revoked following his conviction for: “gross indecency” in 1895.

The new card, bearing Wilde’s photograph and an expiry date of 30 November 1900, the day of his death, was presented to his grandson, author Merlin Holland, at a ceremony marking what would have been Wilde’s 171st birthday. The gesture, the library said, seeks to: “acknowledge the injustices and immense suffering” Wilde endured after being imprisoned for homosexual relationships, then a criminal offence.

Records from June 1895 show trustees of the British Museum noting tersely that: “Mr O. Wilde [was] excluded from the reading room”. At the time, Wilde had been three weeks into a two-year sentence with hard labour, his reputation destroyed following a failed libel case against Lord Queensberry, father of his lover Lord Alfred Douglas.

Holland described the restoration as: “a lovely gesture of forgiveness”, adding that his grandfather’s prison writings, especially De Profundis, still offer comfort to readers facing despair. “People have written to me saying that in moments of terrible depression, his letter from prison meant so much to them,” he said.

Dame Carol Black, chair of the British Library, said Wilde remains: “one of the most significant literary figures of the nineteenth century” and that reissuing his card restores a measure of justice long denied.