For Love of the King: A Burmese Masque.

WILDE, Oscar.

$400.00

Item Number: 139527

London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1923.

First edition of the infamous fifteenth volume of Metheun’s Collected Works of Oscar Wilde which caused a legal dispute between Wilde’s bibliographer, Christopher Millard and the publisher. Octavo, original publisher’s white linen cloth. One of 1000 copies printed on handmade paper. Publisher’s “Presentation Copy” stamp to the title page. Near fine in the rare original dust jacket which is in good condition.

Wilde’s “theme is not, as is often supposed, art’s divorce from life, but its inescapable arraignment by experience. His creative works almost always end in unmasking. The hand that adjusts the green carnation suddenly shakes an admonitory finger. While the ultimate virtue in Wilde’s essays is in make-believe, the denouement of his dramas and narratives is that masks have to go. We must acknowledge what we are. Wilde at least was keen to do so. Though he offered himself as the apostle of pleasure, his created world contains much pain” (Ellmann, xvi).