WILDE, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. 1899. Peter Harrington Rare Books.

WILDE, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. Leonard Smithers and Co, 1899.

Presented by Sammy Jay of Peter Harrington Rare Books.

Square octavo. Original pale purple cloth, gilt lettered spine, gilt floral motifs from designs by Charles Shannon on spine and covers, edges untrimmed, pages uncut. Housed in a custom black quarter morocco and cloth solander box.

First edition, signed limited issue, number 87 of 100 large paper copies signed by the author. This copy is from the library of Wilde’s Swedish translator, Michael Gripenberg, with his bookplate to the front pastedown. The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde’s last play, opened to great acclaim on Valentine’s Day 1895 but was withdrawn after Wilde’s failed libel suit against Lord Queensbury led to his arrest. The subsequent “utter social destruction of Wilde” (ODNB) meant that the play was not published in book form until February 1899, after Wilde’s release from prison. Richard Ellmann comments that Smithers’s handsome editions of Earnest and An Ideal Husband “brought Wilde a little money”.

WILDE, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. 1899. Peter Harrington Rare Books.