Impressions of America.

WILDE, Oscar.

$500.00

Item Number: 140212

Sunderland: Keystone Press, 1906.

First edition of Wilde’s report on his lecture tour throughout America in 1882. Octavo, original stiff paper wrappers. One of fifty numbered copies, this is number 24. Very good with the majority of the original dust jacket.

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).