Salome. A Tragedy in One Act
Oscar Wilder. Illust. Aubrey Beardsley. John Lane, 1907.

16 plates by Aubrey Beardsley, publisher’s decorative cloth gilt.

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde. Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine Privately Printed, 1904.

20-pages of advertisements (including 16 for Ward and Lock), publisher’s printed wrappers in red and black, lacks lower wrapper, upper wrapper detached, chipped at edges and head and tail of spine [Mason 81], 8vo, Ward, Lock and Co., July, 1890; The Soul of Man Under Socialism, NUMBER 231 OF 250 COPIES, half-title inscribed in pencil “H.A. Jan. 08”, bookplate of HERBERT ASQUITH, publisher’s wrappers, 8vo.

The first appearance of Dorian Gray, containing thirteen chapters. The first edition in book form had an additional six chapters and was published by Ward, Lock in 1891. The Lippincott appearance was published simultaneously in London (as here, copies of which are not recorded in ABPC) and in Philadelphia (Mason 82).

__________________________
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.”

“Why?”

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—”

Photographs of Oscar Wilde
London ca. 1890’s.

Two albumen cabinet card photographs, each approximately 6½x4¼”. Two handsome portrait photographs of Wilde, one on the studio card of Alfred Ellis, 20 Upper Baker Street, the other on the card of Alfred Ellis & Walery, 51 Baker Street.

theshipthatflew:

A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde, illustrations by Jessie M. King (1875-1949), via

graveyarddirt:

Oscar Wilde’s Happy Prince
Prague 1969. llustrated by Ota Janeček.

The Sphinx Oscar Wilde.London, Elkin Mathews and John Lane at the Sign of the Bodley Head, 1894.

First Edition, one of 200 copies. Decorated title-page and other illustrations by Charles Ricketts, printed in black, light red and green, pictorial vellum gilt by Charles Ricketts, collector’s slipcase and burgundy morocco- backed green cloth folding box by Zaehnsdorf.

The first and limited edition of Wilde’s poem which he “hesitated to publish… as it would destroy domesticity in England” (Stuart Mason, A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, London, 1914, p.399).