WILDE, Oscar [Lord Alfred Douglas, (translator)]. Salome. A tragedy in one act.

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. [x], 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.

Salomé was written in French in late 1891 while Wilde was staying in Paris, and accepted for production by Sarah Bernhardt at the London Opera House in 1892. However, the Lord Chamberlain prohibited performances because of a ban on Biblical figures being presented on stage, an outcome that understandably incensed Wilde. It was finally published in French in 1893, and then in this translation in 1894.

Translating the nuances of Wilde's original text, written in an idiosyncratic French, has been acknowledged as a Herculean task by all those who have attempted it, including Beardsley. Even though Wilde himself assisted Douglas, the author and the translator nearly came to blows: ‘Wilde immediately complained of Douglas's sloppy, schoolboy French, and an infuriated Douglas blamed any faults upon the original. He and Wilde nearly split over the disagreements, and Robbie Ross – doubtless to his later regret – made peace between them that Fall’ (Daniel).

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 Salome 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.

Mason 350. Ross, ‘Later Work’ 86. See Daniel, ‘Lost In Translation: Oscar, Bosie and Salome’, Princeton University Library Chronicle (2007).

SKU: 2124696