Poems by Oscar Wilde.

WILDE, Oscar.

Item Number: 139770

London: David Bogue, 1881.

Second edition of the collected poems of Oscar Wilde. Octavo, orginal publisher’s gilt decorated full vellum designed by Matthew Bell, top edge gilt. In near fine 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).