Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 142

PATER (WALTER)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £150 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

PATER (WALTER)

Autograph postcard signed, to "Dear Sir", arranging to give a lecture: "Kindly reserve for my proposed lecture the day you have named – Monday, Nov: 24th. at 5 p.m. With many thanks", one page, on a correspondence card, a little foxed, neatly inlaid, 8vo (88 x 114 mm), Brasenose College, 16 June [1890]

Footnotes

THE LECTURE OVERHEARD BY WILDE: this card almost certainly dates from 1890: on Monday 24 November 1890, Pater gave a lecture on Prosper Mérimée at the London Institution (one he had delivered earlier in the month at the Taylor Institution, Oxford). It was printed in the Fortnightly Review, December 1890, and collected in Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays (1895).

Oscar Wilde, who was living in London at the time, is recorded as having attended the lecture. Afterwards, when his admirers gathered round to congratulate him, Pater wondered if they could hear what he said. This prompted Wilde to quip 'We overheard you', and Pater to repost 'Ah, you have a phrase for everything' (see Robert Ross, Masques and Phases, 1909, p. 131). This letter is not printed in The Letters of Walter Pater, edited by Lawrence Evans (1970).

Additional information

Bid now on these items

ADVERTISING POSTERfor 'The Suffragette' newspaper, [c.1913-1914]

ARCHITECTURE - STUART (JAMES) AND NICHOLAS REVETT The Antiquities of Athens, 4 vol. bound in 2, 1825-1830

ILLUMINATED ADDRESS – CLARA CODD Illuminated printed address signed by Emmeline Pankhurst, [1909]

ARMENIAN - HISTORY, THEOLOGY AND PRINTING. Group of books/a map in Armenian, c.1825-1901 (12)

MUSIC & RECORDINGS – ETHEL SMYTH Collection of printed music, song sheets and records, [c.1911-1912]

BANK NOTES - MANUFACTURING BRADBURY (HENRY) On the Security and Manufacture of Bank Notes, FIRST EDITION, Bradbury and Evans, 1856