Wilde Oscar

1882 · réf. #8 — Oscar Wilde Poems. Fourth Edition. London David Bogue 1882. Octavo. ix pp. 1 blank leaf 234 pp. 2 pp. publisher's catalogue and 1 blank leaf. Publisher's binding. Full white vellum Bradel binding both covers decorated with a symmetrical gilt and blind-stamped floral panel spine likewise adorned with a large gilt floral panel title in gilt lettering top edge gilt untrimmed. Fourth edition. Copy enriched with an autograph inscription signed on the verso of the half-title: "To Alphonse Daudet the greatest novelist of our time homage from the author. Oscar Wilde May 3 83." An exceptional inscription to "the greatest novelist of our time." Having only just returned from New York Oscar Wilde spent the period from February to mid-May in Paris. It was there that he made the acquaintance of Alphonse Daudet whom he met both at his home his wife hosted a celebrated salon and at the residence of the painter Giuseppe de Nittis. Robert Harborough Sherard who was a friend of both Daudet and Wilde testified to the genuine esteem the English writer held for the French novelist. Although their aesthetics may at first appear far apart certain parallels can nevertheless be drawn between their works. Thus it has been written of L'Homme au cerveau d'or one of the tales from Lettres de mon moulin that "one might readily believe it to be the work of an Edgar Allan Poe or an Oscar Wilde." Yet Alphonse Daudet like the vast majority of French writers did not distinguish himself by his courage and even went further: in 1895 after Wilde's sentence to two years' hard labour he refused to sign a petition by Hugues Rebell calling for a reduction of his sentence accompanying his refusal with the remark: "As a father I can only express my horror and indignation." Let us recall that this exemplary family man confided to Gustave Flaubert during a dinner: "To experience pleasure against my own flesh I require the flesh of two women one whom I handle and the other who attends to the backside of the one I am fondling" Journal of Edmond de Goncourt 5 May 1876. This inscription by Oscar Wilde certainly dates from a period when he was seeking to ingratiate himself with the French intellectual milieu yet he was nonetheless fully aware of Alphonse Daudet's great talent and sincere in this fine dedication. David Bogue