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The Library of a Deceased Irish Collector
Lot 235

WILDE (OSCAR)
The Ballad of Reading Gaol By C.3.3., third edition, NUMBER 48 OF 99 COPIES SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, Leonard Smithers, 1898

24 June 2015, 11:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £4,375 inc. premium

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WILDE (OSCAR)

The Ballad of Reading Gaol By C.3.3., third edition, NUMBER 48 OF 99 COPIES SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, untrimmed in publisher's purple and white linen, upper cover with gilt floral ornament by Charles Ricketts, gilt lettered spine, some soiling and bumping to extremities, spine slightly darkened, endpapers browned [Mason 374; 'Oscar Wilde. A Collection', Bernard Shapero catalogue, 1989, 49], 8vo, Leonard Smithers, 1898

Footnotes

THE ROBERT BOOTH COPY OF THE SIGNED LIMITED EDITION, issued just one month after the first edition and referred to by Wilde as the 'author's edition'. He repeated his demand that the book should not contain illustrations, and asked that the cloth should be of a different colour and that a design by Ricketts should be added. Wilde also wanted to introduce the dedication he had written for the first edition ("When I came out of prison some met me with garments and with spices and others with wise counsel/ You met me with love"), but Smithers again rejected it.

Provenance: Robert Booth (1890s collector), bookplate; his Leonard Smithers sale at Phillips, 13 June 1996, lot 432.

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