Wilde Oscar

Wilde Oscar — marelibri

AN IDEAL HUSBAND. BY THE AUTHOR OF LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN

1899réf. ST19154London: Leonard Smithers and Co 1899. FIRST EDITION. ONE OF 1000 COPIES. 215 x 155 mm. 8 3/8 x 6". 8 p.l. 213 1 pp. Original lavender cloth decorated with gilt flourishes smooth spine with gilt lettering edges untrimmed and ENTIRELY UNOPENED. Mason 385. ◆Spine slightly sunned as virtually always but no wear to joints or hinges and in all A REMARKABLY WELL-PRESERVED OBVIOUSLY UNREAD COPY because unopened and without the soiling this edition is almost always found with. This is an exceptionally fine copy of Wilde's second hit play successful like his other witty comedies but with at least slightly more serious social and political content. Opening at the Haymarket Theatre in 1895 and continuing for 124 performances it features as the title character a prominent politician in danger of losing his reputation because of a potentially damaging letter that the play's villain threatens to expose if the husband refuses to support the former's corrupt political agenda. The play moves its characters toward a more ideal moral standard as they struggle with dishonesty hypocrisy double standards materialism and corruption of social and political life. But none of this weighs down Wilde's witty banter as the play suggests after all that even when there is a pretense of the embrace of moral probity nobody is ever that good or is even expected to be. The work is dedicated to the Irish-American writer Frank Harris who is said to have given Wilde the idea to use insider trading which related to Disraeli's financial machinations as part of the plot here. Covering the play for the "Saturday Review" George Bernard Shaw declared Wilde 1854-1900 "our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit with philosophy with drama with actors and audience with the whole theatre." On nearly all copies of this edition the publisher's binding is now encountered in unappetizing condition; finding our unopened copy--with virtually none of the soiling almost always seen with the four Wilde plays bound in this lavender cloth--is piece of very good fortune. Leonard Smithers and Co unknown books

Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books and Medieval Manuscripts · États-Unis4 992,00 $US≈ 4 451,18 €

[Wilde, Oscar]ABAA

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

1899réf. 158271899. Shannon Charles. By the Author of Lady Windermere's Fan. London: Leonard Smithers and Co. 1899. Original mauve cloth decorated in gilt. First Edition consisting of 1000 regular copies so stated; there were also 100 signed copies on Van Gelder paper plus twelve signed copies on Japan vellum. This was the fourth and last of Wilde's four great comedies of manners -- following LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN published in 1893 A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE 1894 and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST 1899 five months earlier. "An Ideal Husband" had opened at the Theatre Royal on 3 January 1895 the actors had been quite annoyed that Wilde required them to rehearse on Christmas Day only to keep them waiting for him to appear. It was an immediate success but it was while "Earnest" and "Husband" were running that Wilde inadvisably filed suit against the Marquess of Queensberry father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas for criminal libel; this quickly morphed into a charge of "gross indecency" against Wilde and when he was arrested in April his plays closed. Sentenced to two years' hard labour 1895-1897 upon his release he fled to France -- where he resided when this book was published. The artistic binding design is by Charles Shannon. This is a very good copy of a book that is difficult to find in any better condition: the spine is rather dull and there is moderate cover soil. Mason 385. Provenance: the front endpaper bears the signature "Wilmer C. France 1899". The pioneering female classicist Emily Wilmer Cave France 1868-1951 married name Wright after 1906 was born in Birmingham England and educated first at Girton College Cambridge then at the University of Chicago -- where she was a Fellow in Latin and in Greek while earning her Ph.D.; from 1897 until her retirement in 1933 which span includes the date this book was published she was a Professor in Greek at Bryn Mawr College. In 2022 the Cambridge Philological Society published a monograph by D.N. Greenwood about her "Steely-Eyed Athena: Wilmer Cave Wright and the Advent of Female Classicists. unknown books