WILDE, Oscar; Robert ROSS (editor). [The Works.]

The First Collected Wilde

WILDE, Oscar; Robert ROSS (editor). [The Works.] London: Methuen and Co. 1908.

Fourteen vols, 8vo. Original white buckram, upper boards lettered in gilt with gilt roundels designed by Charles Ricketts, spines lettered directly in gilt, top-edges gilt, the others uncut; slight soiling to spines, lettering to spines tarnished, slight discolouration and a few marks to boards; occasional spotting to endpapers, but internally bright and clean; a good set.

First collected edition of Wilde’s works, edited by Robert Ross, his friend, sometime lover, and literary executor, limited to 1,000 sets printed on handmade paper.

'The text is taken in most instances from the last editions issued under the superintendence of the author. In some cases the volumes contain additional matter which had not previously been reprinted, while some of the volumes contain matter here published for the first time' (Mason, p. 459). One volume, The Picture of Dorian Gray, though entirely uniform with the others, was published by Charles Carrington in Paris.

Wilde died bankrupt in Paris in 1900; the journalist and gallery owner Robert Baldwin Ross remained loyal to his friend after Wilde’s 1895 trial for gross indecency and subsequent prison sentence. ‘Before his release from Reading gaol, Wilde had appointed Ross his literary executor; but, with Wilde's estate bankrupt, it was not until 1905 that Ross was able to pay Wilde's creditors and annul the bankruptcy. In 1905 Ross published De Profundis, an abridged version of Wilde's tormented prison letter to Lord Alfred Douglas. In 1908 Ross published, in fourteen volumes, The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde’ (ODNB).

This set is without the seldom-found fifteenth volume, For the Love of the King, published in 1922 as a supplementary volume to the 1908 Works. Mabel Cosgrove Wodehouse-Pearse, Princess Chan-Toon, had approached Methuen with letters purportedly by Wilde formerly in the possession of Robert Ross, as well as the manuscript of the ‘long-lost’ play by Wilde; Wilde’s bibliographer, Christopher Sclater Millard – better known by his pseudonym, Stuart Mason – sued Methuen for libel on the grounds that they had knowingly offered for sale as genuine a book which they knew to be a forgery. Wodehouse-Pearse was unable to attend the trial as she was then in prison for defrauding an elderly woman, following a stint in a Mexican prison for blackmail.

Mason, pp. 459–85.

SKU: 2116276