An exhibition to mark the 120th anniversary of the death of Oscar Wilde opens today on a dedicated page of the Bonhams website. Man of our Times will run from February 15-23. There are manuscripts, letters, first editions, association copies and ephemera from the collection of bibliophile and former dealer in Oriental antiques Jeremy Mason. He has been collecting Wilde memorabilia for the past 55 years. Shown here is the bill for flowers at Oscar Wilde’s funeral made out to Robert Ross and amounting to 77 francs. The poet, dramatist and novelist died in a rundown Paris hotel in November 1900.
A questionnaire filled in by a young Oscar Wilde comes up at Sotheby’s online Summer Miscellany sale of Books and Manuscripts which closes on August 4. Recording preferences across 39 questions he responds as follows:
Your idea of happiness?‘Absolute power over men’s minds, even if accompanied by chronic toothache’
Your idea of misery?‘Living a poor and respectable life in an obscure village’.
What is your dream? ‘Getting my hair cut’
‘What is your aim in life?’‘Success: fame or even notoriety’.
Wilde was in his early twenties when he contributed to the album of “Mental Photographs” in 1877. He was still at Oxford and yet to publish a book, but had already established a keen following. It is signed grandiosely with his full name, ‘Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde’.
It is from the collection of actor and director Steven Berkoff (b.1937), famed for his villainous on-screen roles including General Orlov in the James Bond classic, Octopussy (1983). Berkoff began collecting Oscar Wilde material around the time he directed Wilde’s great tragedy, Salome, in the late 1980s. The show opened to acclaim at The Gate Theatre, Dublin, on the sixtieth anniversary of Salome’s first controversial public viewing there in 1928, and went on to sell out at London’s National Theatre, before travelling to Japan, Germany and beyond. The estimate is £40,000-60,000.
1st edition, 1813, Pride and Prejudice: A Novel in three volumes.
Jane Austen, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde will all feature at Peter Harrington’s stand at the Paris Antiquarian Book Fair from April 22-24 at the Nef du Grand Palais. The Paris Fair, one of the most prestigious of its kind, offers its ever increasing number of visitors a panorama of the highlights of our written heritage, together with a vast selection of engravings and drawings.
Nearly two hundred national and international dealers will attend to unveil thousands of exceptional documents, representative of cultural history.
Among the books at London dealer Peter Harrington is a 1st edition of Pride and Prejudice 1813 priced at £87,500, a 1st edition of Bran Stoker’s Dracula 1897 priced at £17,500 and and a trade issue 1st edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salome 1893 priced at £27,500.
