WILDE, Oscar; [Lord Alfred DOUGLAS (translator); Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator)]. Salome. A tragedy in one act.

The First Illustrated Salomé

WILDE, Oscar; [Lord Alfred DOUGLAS (translator); Aubrey BEARDSLEY (illustrator)]. Salome. A tragedy in one act. London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane. 1894.

Small 4to. Original blue-green woven cloth, gilt designs after Beardsley blocked to boards, spine lettered in gilt, fore- and tail-edges uncut; pp. [10], 67, [1], 14 (advertisements), [2], 10 plates including frontispiece, illustrated title-page, contents page, and tailpiece by Aubrey Beardsley, printed on glazed paper from line blocks engraved by Carl Hentschel; a few chips to joints and corners, small loss to head of spine affecting 2 letters of gilt text, spine sunned; internally very clean; a very good copy; bookplate of William Forbes Morgan (1841–1916) to front pastedown.

First English edition of Wilde’s one-act tragedy, the first with Beardsley’s illustrations (four of which contain caricatures of Oscar Wilde), one of only 500 copies, translated by and dedicated to Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

Though Wilde tried to fix some of the errors, Douglas raged when he did, and wrote to the publishers that September, ‘as I cannot consent to have my work altered and edited, and thus to become a mere machine for doing the rough work of translation, I have decided to relinquish the affair altogether.’ (Daniel). Nevertheless, their relationship recovered, and the translation has since become the text most familiar to Anglophone audiences. Steven Berkoff used the Douglas translation for his critically acclaimed Salomé at the National Theatre in 1988, with all its archaisms and errors unabridged.

Sadly, Wilde never saw the play produced. Its only performance during his lifetime was a one-off presentation at the Théatre de la Comédie-Parisienne on 11 February 1896, by which time he was already in prison. It was not performed publicly in Britain until 1931.

Gertner Zatlin 865–81; Mason 350; Reade 274–83; Samuels Lasner 59; Vallance 86. See Daniel, ‘Lost In Translation: Oscar, Bosie and Salome’, Princeton University Library Chronicle (2007).

SKU: 2124696