11 Mar 2003
10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street
Printed Books, Maps & Manuscripts
Back to auction 10053
Printed Books, Maps & Manuscripts
Back to auction 10053
WILDE (OSCAR)
Autograph letter signed (“Oscar Wilde”), to “My Dear Tristram” [?Everett], complaining at being stood up: “I waited in for you with the most charming expression on my face – ready to be painted – but little Tristram was faithless…” and arranging to meet him at five on Sunday instead; he also suggests he look out last night’s Pall Mall Gazette where he “will see a holocaust of poets”, 3 pages, 8vo, printed letter-head, very slight dust-staining, 16 Tite Street, undated [?December 1888
Sold for
£2,232
inc. premium
Footnotes
- This fine and characteristic letter appears to be unpublished, and is not included in The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (2000). A proper search through Wildes collected reviews (vol.xiii of his Collected Works, edited by Robert Ross, 1908) may well suggest a date for this letter: one possibility is that Wilde is referring to his review of Douglas Sladens Australian Poets, 1788-1888, published in the Pall Mall Gazette on 14 December 1888, where it is described as an extraordinary collection of mediocrities whom Mr Sladen has somewhat ruthlessly dragged from their modest and well-merited obscurity. Little Tristram, the recipient of this letter, is presumably the son of Mrs Everett whose exhibition Thomas Hardy discusses in 1901 (see above).
Category: Books / Books, Maps and Manuscripts
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