Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$56.10 + shipping
Description: WILDE, Oscar. After Reading : Letters of Oscar Wilde to Robert Ross. (Westminster : Beaumont Press, 1921). First Edition, Numbered. Pp (6),7-59,(1). Illustrated. 8vo, cloth spine, decorated paper covered boards. The Cover andDecorations designed and cut on wood by Ethelbert White. Mikhail p.25. Letters were written at Berneval during the summer of 1897. The twelfth bookissued by the Beaumont Press. No. 381 of 400 numbered, unsigned copies printed on handmade paper (of a total printing of 475). Ex-library (white spinenumbers, blacked out library label to front board, library bookplate), some edgewear, else very good. 75.00
Seller: John W. Doull, Bookseller, Dartmouth, NS, Canada
Price: US$75.00 + shipping
Description: 397 of 400. Good++ decorative boards. Grey cloth spine, gilt letters, decorative endpapers. 59pp. some water staining to page edges. Boards slightly warped
Seller: Westsider Rare & Used Books Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$192.13 + shipping
Description: First edition. Octavo. 65 pages. Cover and decorations designed by Randolph Schwabe. Linen-backed patterned boards.Out of a total edition of 475 copies this is one of 400 printed on handmade paper.Small nameplate in corner of front pastedown. Covers a bit rubbed at the edges. Very good.
Seller: Peter Ellis, Bookseller, ABA, ILAB, London, United Kingdom
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Description: 440/475, Large Octavo. 59 (1)pp. Original gray half cloth over decorative boards with gilt lettering on spine. Illustrated endpapers and title page. 'Letters written by Oscar Wilde during the summer of 1897 after his release from prison to Robert Ross, who had approached Beaumont about publication. After Ross's sudden death in 1918 Vyvyan Holland, Wilde's son, had renewed the offer. Ethelbert White, the illustrator, was unable to go to France to do the drawings on the spot, therefor photographs were used, borrowed from Wilde's bibliographer Stuart Mason, who also gave details for the coloring. The title page illustration depicts the Chalet Bourgeat where Wilde had written most of the letters. It is printed in four colors: blue-green, pink and brown, but in trying to obtain the misty effect which Beaumont wanted, the colors were softened to make the image indistinct and inferior to the original design. much more successful are the two illustrations, each done in two colors, of the Hotel de la Plage and the church and shrine of Notre Dame de Liesse, to which Wilde had made several pilgrimages. Liesse was an old word for joy, but the weeping willows on the endpapers and the barred decoration of the cover, suggesting Wilde's ostracism from English society, reflect more truly his own plight.' (ABMR article, August 1981). The binding is sewn through the endpapers. The colophon device is design 2 of the Beaumont Press. Cloth rubbed. Boards sunned along edges, Ex Libris on inside front cover. Block uncut at foredge. Binding in overall good,+ interior in fine condition.
Seller: ERIC CHAIM KLINE, BOOKSELLER (ABAA ILAB), Santa Monica, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$523.58 + shipping
Description: WILDE, Oscar. After Reading : Letters of Oscar Wilde to Robert Ross. (Westminster : Beaumont Press, 1921). Edition de Luxe, Numbered and Signed. Pp (6),7-59,(7). Illustrated. 8vo, vellum spine, decorated paper covered boards.The Cover and Decorations designed and cut on wood by Ethelbert White. Mikhail p.25. Letters were written at Berneval during the summer of 1897. Thetwelfth book issued by the Beaumont Press. The Edition de Luxe contains anextra suite of the key-blocks printed in black. No. 40 of 75 numbered copies printed on Japanese vellum signed by the publisher (C.W. Beaumont) and the artist (Ethelbert White) of a total printing of 475.Vellum spine browned,wear to edges and corners rounded, else a very good copy. 700.00
Seller: John W. Doull, Bookseller, Dartmouth, NS, Canada
Price: US$560.98 + shipping
Description: WILDE, Oscar. After Reading : Letters of Oscar Wilde to Robert Ross. (Westminster : Beaumont Press, 1921). Edition de Luxe, Numbered and Signed. Pp (6),7-59,(7). Illustrated. 8vo, vellum spine, decorated paper covered boards.The Cover and Decorations designed and cut on wood by Ethelbert White. Mikhail p.25. Letters were written at Berneval during the summer of 1897. Thetwelfth book issued by the Beaumont Press. The Edition de Luxe contains anextra suite of the key-blocks printed in black. No. 62 of 75 numbered copies printed on Japanese vellum signed by the publisher (C.W. Beaumont) and the artist (Ethelbert White) of a total printing of 475. Edges browned and lightly worn, scuffing to rear board, else a very good copy. 750.00
Seller: John W. Doull, Bookseller, Dartmouth, NS, Canada
Price: US$640.43 + shipping
Description: First editions, limited issues, numbers 127 and 231 of 200 and 400 copies respectively (a further 75 copies of each edition were issued on Japanese vellum and signed by publisher and artists). Separately issued companion volumes, collecting Wilde's letters to Ross, his sometime-lover, constant companion and literary executor, written from France in the aftermath of his release from Reading Gaol. Ross faithfully guarded Wilde's personal and literary legacy after his death, pursuing pirated editions and preserving his literary rights for Wilde's sons. It was he who commissioned Epstein's sculpture for the tomb at Père Lachaise and his will stipulated that his own ashes should be placed there with Oscar's.Ross had prepared a volume of Wilde's post-prison letters to him before the first war and had drafted an introduction shortly before his own sudden death in 1918. These two small volumes are selections, but represent the earliest attempt at a collection of Wilde letters. They are expurgated by removing the names of Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance Wilde and a few others, but the meanings are always obvious. 2 vols, 8vo (215 × 140 mm), pp. 59, [1]; 65, [1]. After Reading with 2 wood engravings by Ethelbert White; After Berneval with coloured wood engraving by Randolph Schwabe, title with vignettes, all printed in colours, printers device to colophons. Original brown cloth-backed patterned boards, spines lettered in gilt, illustrated endpapers. Preserving both glassine jackets (slightly crinkled and shrunken). Very good copies.
Seller: Justin Croft Antiquarian Books Ltd ABA, Faversham, United Kingdom
Price: US$1820.00 + shipping
Description: 222 x 152 mm. (8 3/4 x 6"). Two separately issued but companion volumes. Original vellum-backed decorative paper boards. Reading with vignette on title in orange and green, two plates in the same colors, one facsimile of writing in text, device on final page, stylized illustration of a tree on front and rear endpapers; "Berneval" with woodcuts of Naples and Paris printed in blue on the front and rear endpapers, two-color title page woodcut, one plate, a facsimile of a Wilde letter, and printer's woodcut device; our special deluxe version WITH THREE ADDITIONAL WOODCUTS at the back of each volume, all the woodcuts as well as the cover design by Randolph Schwabe. Ransom, p. 211; Tomkinson, p. 17. âBerneval spine just a bit darkened, otherwise FINE, UNWORN COPIES that have obviously been little used, as they open stiffly and are immaculate inside and out. Here, "After Berneval" is offered with "After Reading," its (earlier) companion volume, both of them in their deluxe form on Japanese vellum and including an extra suite of the illustrations. "Reading" comprises a set of letters, also written to Ross, by Wilde during the summer of 1897, after having just been released from two years' imprisonment in Reading Gaol. The preface to its sequel, "After Berneval," says that the earlier collection "was unprocurable almost as soon as it was published." The letters in these volumes tell the story of a tragic literary figure who fell from a precipitous height. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born and raised in Ireland, studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, before settling in London. There, he became famous for his unmatched wit and infamous for his personal eccentricities--long hair, décor at his lodgings that included peacock feathers and blue china, and, ultimately, sexual behavior that was deemed both intolerable and criminal. During the first half of the 1890s, he was enjoying remarkable social prominence and literary success with the staging of "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892), "A Woman of No Importance" (1893), "An Ideal Husband" (1894), and the incomparable "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). But two months after the staging of this last play, he brought a defamation suit against the Marquess of Queensbury, the father of his intimate friend, Lord Alfred Douglas. The suit backfired: in the course of the litigation, Wilde was investigated by police, and his homosexuality was exposed, leaving his reputation destroyed. He was sentenced in May of 1895 to two years of hard labor, spending part of his time behind bars at Reading Gaol, where he produced his powerful poem, "De Profundis." After release, he moved to the Continent and died three years later in Paris of meningitis. As Day says, "Among English men of letters only Byron and Shaw have surpassed Wilde in the craft of conscious posing and self-publicizing," a fact that has made succeeding generations suspicious of the reality behind the legend that the author helped to establish. But after a period when he was treated as a kind of martyr because of his suffering at the hands of squeamish Victorianism, "it is at last possible to evaluate Wilde as the capable literary artist he actually was." In physical terms, these are modest but nevertheless pleasing products of the Beaumont Press, founded by Cyril W. Beaumont in 1917. A special feature of the Press is its patterned paper bindings, each with a design created for one title only. FIRST EDITIONS. EACH ONE OF 75 COPIES ON JAPANESE VELLUM OF THE EDITION DE LUXE SIGNED BY THE PUBLISHER AND ARTIST (of a total of 475 copies).
Seller: Phillip J. Pirages Rare Books (ABAA), McMinnville, OR, U.S.A.