Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$1236.35 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 21.5 cm. (16), 132 pp., 16 pp. publisher's catalogue. Orig. light brown cloth with gilt spine title and gilt vignettes on the boards. Binding very slightly faded and with a few stains, uncut edges, endpapers and margins of text nlock slightly tanned, armorial exlibris of David Barker on inside upper board (Anumi et Fide). * First edition. * The first of Wilde's comic plays.
Seller: Harbeck Rare Books, Carina, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Price: US$1320.00 + shipping
Description: Small quarto (21.75cm.); original reddish-brown gilt-embossed cloth; [14],132,14[ads]pp. Extremities a bit rubbed, narrow strip of discoloration to fore-edge of upper cover, minor foxing to textblock, upper hinge cracked but still quite strong; About Very Good. Contemporary bookplate of Oscar Wilde collector Jon Weekly. 500 copies issued (MASON 357).
Seller: Lorne Bair Rare Books, ABAA, Winchester, VA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 8vo. 21.5 by 16 cm. 8.5 by 6.25 inches. [18], 132, 14, [2] pp. With publisher's list of books in the back. In this first edition, apparently only 500 copies were printed! The pages are heavily toned, per the norm for the paper stock, but clean otherwise. The binding is tight. A few uncut leaves in the advertisement section. FEP with small ornamental bookplate pastedown of "Carroll Atwood Wilson", who was a well-known book collector of his day as well as a lawyer and chief legal counsel to the Guggenheims. The publisher's peach-colored cloth has some blistering on the boards. Along the edges there are long narrow spots in which the color is washed out. The spine has been rebacked with most of the original spine mounted thereon, with a small loss of the gilt lettering transpiring. The resulting spine also has small dark spots, and one is likely not to find it prepossessing.
Seller: White Fox Rare Books, ABAA/ILAB, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1650.00 + shipping
Description: Small quarto (21.75cm.); original reddish-brown gilt-embossed cloth; [14],132,14[ads]pp. Straight and tight, with the boards slightly faded at margins as is typical, and a few spots where cloth has begun to lift. The text is slightly tanned, but foxing is contained to endpapers. In all, a pleasing and well-preserved copy of a fragile book. 500 copies issued (MASON 357).
Seller: Lorne Bair Rare Books, ABAA, Winchester, VA, U.S.A.
Price: US$1800.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition, first printing. Bound in publisher's mauve cloth stamped in gilt. Very Good with soiling and darkening to cloth, and corners and spine ends bumped. Previous owner bookplate and gift inscription to front endpaper. Pages toned. One of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde's best-known plays, a comedy in four acts.
Seller: Burnside Rare Books, ABAA, Portland, OR, U.S.A.
WILDE, Oscar. Lady Windermere's Fan. A Play about a Good Woman. , 1893.
Price: US$2655.32 + shipping
Description: First edition, one of 500 small-paper copies. Small 4to., original reddish brown cloth, decorated after Charles Shannon. Uncut. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, Mason, 357; Nelson, BH, 1893.26/67. A touch of darkening to the spine, and a few small areas of bubbling to the cloth on the front board, and a gift inscription quite neatly effaced from the front free endpaper.
Seller: Maggs Bros. Ltd ABA, ILAB, PBFA, BA, London, United Kingdom
Wilde, Oscar. Lady Windermere's Fan. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893.
Price: US$3500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First Edition, First Printing bound in the ORIGINAL salmon cloth from the publisher. A wonderful copy. The book is in nice condition. The binding is tight, and the boards are crisp with slight wear to the edges. The pages are clean with no writing, marks or bookplates in the book. Overall, a beautiful copy of this TRUE FIRST EDITION in collector's condition. We buy Oscar Wilde First Editions.
Seller: Magnum Opus Rare Books, Missoula, MT, U.S.A.
Price: US$4810.36 + shipping
Description: First edition, first impression. Wilde's first light comedy, Lady Windermere's Fan was produced at the St. James's Theatre on 20 February 1892. Quarto (218 x 160 mm). Finely bound by the Chelsea Bindery in full dark blue morocco, titles and decoration to spine gilt, panelling to boards gilt, floral corner pieces gilt, decoration to turn-ins gilt, marbled endpapers gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Mild toning to pages, an excellent copy.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
WILDE, Oscar. LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN A Play About Good Women. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893.
Price: US$11224.16 + shipping
Description: First edition, large paper issue, limited to 50 copies printed on handmade paper. Publisher's brown buckram titled in gilt to the spine with gilt decoration to the covers designed by Charles Shannon. A near fine copy, with the spine and edges inevitably darkened, but the boards free from wear and the gilt bright. Internally, offsetting to the endpapers, but exceptionally fresh. An unusually well preserved copy. The first of Wilde's comic plays, which were to make his fortune and establish himself as the pre-eminent playwright of the 1890s. His previous plays, Vera, The Duchess of Padua and Salome, all tragedies, had either flopped or been banned. Wilde's move to comedy enabled him to make use of a ready wit to create a play of manners which subtly pokes fun at its audience. This edition de luxe, uncommon by dint of its limitation, is now very seldom encountered in nice condition.
Seller: Jonkers Rare Books, Henley on Thames, OXON, United Kingdom
Price: US$12500.00 + shipping
Description: "I can resist anything except temptation" "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about" WILDE, Oscar. Lady Windermere's Fan. A Play About a Good Woman. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane at the Sign of the Bodley Head, 1893. First edition. One of fifty large-paper copies on hand-made paper. Quarto (8 5/8 x 6 5/8 inches; 220 x 169 mm.). [i, blank], [i], limitation], [iii-xvi], 132 pp. Handsomely bound by Zaehnsdorf ca. 1897 (stamp-signed in gilt on front turn-in) and with their exhibition stamp in black on rear paste-down. Full dark green crushed levant morocco, covers bordered in gilt enclosing a six-line gilt border. Spine with five raised bands decoratively framed and lettered in gilt in compartments, gilt-ruled board edges, multi gilt-lined turn-ins, top edge gilt, others uncut. With the bookplates of the renowned collector C. S. Ascherson (dated 1897) and Paul Louis Weiller (also a famous book collector and a great friend of J. Paul Getty) on front paste-down. Housed in a felt-lined dark green cloth clamshell case, spine with leather label, lettered in gilt. A couple of tiny and unobtrusive minor stains on blank borders otherwise an absolutely fine copy in a wonderful and early, if somewhat austere binding by the great firm of Zaehnsdorf. Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St. James's Theatre in London. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is having an affair with another woman. She confronts him with it but although he denies it, he invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's supposed unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere decides to leave her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. It is then revealed Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter's marriage. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays including Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for homosexuality, imprisonment, and early death at age 46. Mason, 358.
Seller: David Brass Rare Books, Inc., Calabasas, CA, U.S.A.