WILDE, Oscar. An Ideal Husband (Signed limited edition, exuberant early 20th-century slate-blue crushed morocco)

London: Smithers, 1899. Small quarto. First edition, first impression. pp. [xiv], 213. Bound in full slate blue morocco, covers framed by gilt fillets with inlaid red morocco fan cornerpieces surrounded by twining gilt vines, raised bands, spine compartments with leafy gilt sprays; torquoise morocco doublures framed in gilt with botanical cornerpieces; turquoise watered silk endleaves; top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed. In a velvet-lined black cloth clamshell box by the Chelsea Bindery. One of 100 copies printed, this is Number 6, signed by Oscar Wilde. A Large Paper Copy. Front doublure with traces of bookplate removal. Spine evenly darkened (though gilt still bright), gentle wear to corners, a preliminary leaf with minor closed tear at the top, four pages with trivial marginal stain, but an extremely attractive and near fine copy nevertheless, the binding showing little use, and the text notably bright, clean, and fresh, with vast margins.

Mason 386.
This is the much sought-after strictly limited and signed edition of Wilde’s second hit play, in a binding that suggests the truth of his aphorism, “Nothing succeeds like excess.” Our opulent binding is unsigned, but its extravagance would surely please the great aesthete. With elegant inlays and gilt tooling, plus fine leather doublures and silk endleaves, our binding incorporates many of the characteristics of the early 20th century flowering of bookbinding in England. The fan cornerpieces are not only lovely, but they suggest a winking reference to the play by which the unnamed author here is identified on the title page (“the author of Lady Windermere’s Fan”).
An Ideal Husband was successful like Wilde’s other witty comedies, but it has at least slightly more serious social and political content. Opening at the Haymarket Theatre in January 1895 to an audience that included the Prince of Wales, it was an immediate success, and continued for 124 performances, it features as the title character a prominent politician. He finds himself in danger of losing his reputation because of a potentially damaging letter that the play’s villain threatens to expose if the husband refuses to support the former’s corrupt political agenda. The play moves its characters toward a more ideal moral standard as they struggle with dishonesty, hypocrisy, double standards, materialism, and corruption of social and political life. But none of this weighs down Wilde’s witty banter, as the play suggests; after all, even when there is a pretence of the embrace of moral probity, nobody is ever that good or is even expected to be. The work is dedicated to the Irish-American writer Frank Harris, who is said to have given Wilde the idea to use insider trading (which related to Disraeli’s financial machinations) as part of the plot here. Covering the play for the Saturday Review, George Bernard Shaw declared Wilde (1854-1900) “our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theatre.” Copies of the first edition of this play are not uncommon in the marketplace, but our Large Paper, signed edition is obviously rare as well as highly prized.
Wilde could write English of silken delicacy, but in his choice of epithets there are frequent traces of that ‘industry’ which he denounced as the ‘root of all ugliness’. Oscar Wilde’s third comedy, An Ideal Husband premiered at the Haymarket on 3 January 1895, before Wilde’s trial, but was not published until after his release from prison. This edition was published anonymously. There was no author stated on the first printing, with merely “By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan” printed on title page. This work together with The Importance of Being Earnest, is often considered Wilde’s dramatic masterpiece.

[L4 8B]