Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime & Other Stories.

WILDE, Oscar.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 139780

London: James R. Osgood, 1891.

First edition of  this collection of Wilde’s humorous mystery stories, published the same year as the first edition in book form of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Octavo, original stiff paper-covered boards. In good condition. Very rare.

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). In addition to the title story, Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime & Other Stories contains The Sphinx withoout a Secret, The Canterville Ghost, and The Model Millionaire.