Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Two Hundred Books From the Library of Richard Butler Glaenzer: Masterpieces of French Engravings of the Eighteenth Century, Rare Books on Art and Famous Art Collections; A Remarkable Assemblage of Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Presentation Copies, and Rare Editions of Oscar Wilde
Mimes. The dated copy of Poems, presented to Colonel Morse in New York, is the same edition which the author is holding in one of the painful photographs by Sarony. The inscription to the gilded Sphinx in The Importance of Being Earnest is incomparable.
De Profundis and several other first editions occur in unique states, while the illustrated comic history, Ye Soul Agonies in ye life of Oscar Wilde, is interesting not only as America's view of the aesthete's tour of 1882, but on account of the curious, if sinister, realization of its title.
The foreign versions of Wilde were secured primarily for bibliographical purposes, some, for example, the editions of Salome from Germany, Sweden and Russia, with great difficulty; for the bibliophiles of those countries prize the native first edition as our collectors do the first Beardsley edition. But apart from this purpose, was the desire to see each nation's interpretation of Wilde's work. In the case of Salome in particular, it is illuminating.
Wilde's own copy of Salome! No doubt it went for a song on April 24, 1895, when the vultures descended on the bijou house in, Tite Street. Nine years later, out of the royalties of this one play in Germany alone, thousands of pounds were paid back to Wilde's incredulous creditors.
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