“IN HER DEALINGS WITH MAN DESTINY NEVER CLOSES HER ACCOUNTS”: THE WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE, LARGE-PAPER LIMITED EDITION, HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CONTEMPORARY PURPLE ART-NOUVEAU CALF-GILT BY BENNETT
WILDE, Oscar. The Writings of Oscar Wilde. New York: Gabriel Wells, 1925. Twelve volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter purple morocco gilt, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut and partly unopened.
Lovely large-paper limited edition set, number 278 of only 575 copies, of Wilde’s works, handsomely bound by Whitman Bennett with gilt Art Nouveau lilies—Wilde’s signature flower—decorating the spines. A beautiful set.
Wilde's "theme is not, as is often supposed, art's divorce from life, but its inescapable arraignment by experience. His creative works almost always end in unmasking. The hand that adjusts the green carnation suddenly shakes an admonitory finger. While the ultimate virtue in Wilde's essays is in make-believe, the denouement of his dramas and narratives is that masks have to go. We must acknowledge what we are. Wilde at least was keen to do so. Though he offered himself as the apostle of pleasure, his created world contains much pain" (Ellmann, xvi). Includes Wilde's complete plays, poems, stories, essays, "De Profundis," and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. With introductions and commentaries by various authors, including Richard le Gallienne, W.B. Yeats, Walter Pater, Arthur Symonds, Robert Ross, John Cowper Powys, Padraic Colum, and others.
A lovely set in fine condition, beautifully bound.