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WILDE (OSCAR) The Picture of Dorian Gray, NUMBER 144 OF 250 COPIES ON VAN GELDER PAPER SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, Ward, Lock & Co., 1891 image 1
WILDE (OSCAR) The Picture of Dorian Gray, NUMBER 144 OF 250 COPIES ON VAN GELDER PAPER SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, Ward, Lock & Co., 1891 image 2
WILDE (OSCAR) The Picture of Dorian Gray, NUMBER 144 OF 250 COPIES ON VAN GELDER PAPER SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, Ward, Lock & Co., 1891 image 3
Lot 116

WILDE (OSCAR)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, NUMBER 144 OF 250 COPIES ON VAN GELDER PAPER SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, Ward, Lock & Co., 1891

15 September 2021, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £20,250 inc. premium

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WILDE (OSCAR)

The Picture of Dorian Gray, NUMBER 144 OF 250 COPIES ON VAN GELDER PAPER SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, half-title and title designed by Charles Ricketts, occasional very light foxing, some browning to fore-edges, untrimmed in publisher's parchment-backed grey bevelled boards, upper cover with gilt design by Ricketts incorporating title and inverted pyramid of "butterflies", t.e.g., spine browned, some restoration to spine ends and new endpapers, housed in modern green leather-backed marbled solander box [Mason 329; 'Oscar Wilde. A Collection', Bernard Shapero Catalogue, 1989, 16], 4to, Ward, Lock & Co., 1891

Footnotes

"LEAVE MY BOOK, I BEG YOU, TO THE IMMORTALITY THAT IT DESERVES": THE SIGNED LARGE PAPER EDITION OF WILDE'S MASTERPIECE, HIS ONLY NOVEL.

The deluxe edition was published some three months after the trade edition, which itself was preceded by the shorter novella length version which had appeared the year before, in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. The paper's editor, J. M. Stoddart, had removed some 500 words without Wilde's permission, but nonetheless its publication caused a great outcry from some reviewers. Wilde vigorously defended its merits in the press, but made further revisions to the text for the 1891 edition, whilst adding the famous Preface which was effectively a literary and artistic manifesto written as a rebuttal to the criticisms.

This copy has a variant form of the title-page with a full stop after the word 'Gray'; the full stop is not present in Mason's reproduction of the title-page but is seemingly often found.

Provenance: Private French collection.

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