Poems

by Wilde Oscar

$40,000 · Offered by Biblio

Signed

*Oscar Wilde** *Poems. Fourth Edition.* London, David Bogue, 1882. Octavo. ix pp., 1 blank leaf, 234 pp., 2 pp. publisher's catalogue, and 1 blank leaf. Publisher's binding. Full white vellum Bradel binding, both covers decorated with a symmetrical gilt and blind-stamped floral panel, spine likewise adorned with a large gilt floral panel, title in gilt lettering, top edge gilt, untrimmed. Fourth edition. Copy enriched with an autograph inscription signed on the verso of the half-title: "To Alphonse Daudet, the greatest novelist of our time, homage from the author. Oscar Wilde, May 3, 83." An exceptional inscription to "the greatest novelist of our time." Having only just returned from New York, Oscar Wilde spent the period from February to mid-May in Paris. It was there that he made the acquaintance of Alphonse Daudet, whom he met both at his home (his wife hosted a celebrated salon) and at the residence of the painter Giuseppe de Nittis. Robert Harborough Sherard, who was a friend of both Daudet and Wilde, testified to the genuine esteem the English writer held for the French novelist. Although their aesthetics may at first appear far apart, certain parallels can nevertheless be drawn between their works. Thus, it has been written of *L'Homme au cerveau d'or*, one of the tales from *Lettres de mon moulin*, that "one might readily believe it to be the work of an Edgar Allan Poe or an Oscar Wilde." Yet Alphonse Daudet, like the vast majority of French writers, did not distingu

• Publisher: David Bogue
• Year: 1882

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