On February 18, Bonhams auction house in London will hold a sale of books, photographs, and ephemera related to the Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s life and work. The items come from the holdings of former antiques dealer and bibliophile Jeremy Mason, who has been collecting Oscar Wilde memorabilia for the last 60 years.
An aesthete and dandy, Wilde was nearly as famous for his wit as for his writing, which includes poems, plays, and a single novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1890. In the early 1890s he made a name for himself as a dramatist with works like Salomé (published 1893, performed 1896) and The Importance of Being Earnest (performed 1895, published 1899).
Wilde’s success, however, was short-lived: In 1895 he was convicted of “gross indecency” for his homosexual liaisons and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Following his release he moved to France, where he died in 1900 at the age of 46.
Highlights of the Bonhams sale will include an 1891 copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray signed by the author, estimated at $16,000–$24,000; a signed 1898 copy of Wilde’s last poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, estimated at $13,000–$20,000; a letter to a child, Beatrice Faudel-Phillips, in which Wilde describes himself as a wall flower who doesn’t dance anymore, estimated at $5,400-$8,100; and a circa 1893 photograph of Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde led to Wilde’s imprisonment, estimated at $1,300-$2,700.
In the Bonhams press release for the auction, Mason writes, “The collection in general is meant to reflect all the aspects of Wilde’s life, from his childhood (the Prize Book from Portora School, lot 3), to his rise to the heights of his literary success and celebrity, his fall from grace, and his imprisonment and exile. . . . I hope other collectors will find things to interest them, not only among the highlights, but among the pamphlets and the correspondence – it is the ephemera which gives the collection life.”
