Bibliography of Oscar Wilde.

MASON, Stuart.

$80.00

Item Number: 140208

London: T. Werner Laurie Ltd., n.d..

Later printing of Mason’s renowned bibliography of the works of Oscar Wilde. Octavo, bound in full cloth, illustrated. With a note by Robert Ross. In very 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).