A House of Pomegranates.

WILDE, Oscar.

Item Number: 139750

London: Methuen and Coy Ltd, 1915.

First edition illustrated by Jessie King of Wilde’s famous collection of fairy tales. Quarto, original pubilsher’s cloth, pictorial endpapers, with sixteen illustrations by Jessie King. In very good condition. Ownership inscriptions.

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). Heavily influenced by the style and structure of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Wilde once said that this collection was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public." The collection includes The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and his Soul, and The Star-Child.