The Bodley Booklets: Complete set, including The Happy Hypocrite.

£1,235 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A very good copy, wrappers slightly chipped as usual, and with just a little wear and soiling. This is the earlier state of the wrappers, with the full stop on the front cover. Beerbohm sent Wilde a copy on his release from prison, and Wilde responded enthusiastically and gratefully in a beautiful letter (Holland p. 856) “I used to think gratitude a heavy burden for one to carry. Now I know that it is something that makes the heart lighter. The Happy Hypocrite is a wonderful and beautiful story”. Wilde disliked the “cynical directness of the name … though I know what joy there is in picking up a brickbat and wearing it as a buttonhole … The implied and accepted recognition of Dorian Gray in the story cheers me. I had always been disappointed that my story had suggested no other work of art in others … on reading your surprising and to me quite novel story how useless it is for gaolers to deprive an artist of pen and ink. One’s work goes on just the same, with entrancing variations.” Housed with the following in a smart modern folding box, to make a complete set of the Bodley Booklets, as below: “Richard de Lyrienne” [i.e. David HODGE and George MATHESON]. The Quest of the Gilt-Edged Girl by Richard de Lyrienne. Bodley Booklets No. 2. 1897 SHARP, Evelyn. The Making of a Schoolgirl. Bodley Booklets No. 2 [sic.]. 1897 STREET, G.S. Some Notes of a Struggling Genius. Bodley Booklets No. 4. 1898. GRAHAME, Kenneth. The Headswoman. Bodley Booklets No. 5. 1898. ROLFE, Frederick, as “B

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