Sales catalogue 565: Maggs Bros

Date:: 1931

Reference:: WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/110

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 565: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

182/184 page 148

Wilde (Oscar)—continued. honourable Firm, cannot plead their own carelessness, or lack of intellectual interest, as an excuse for the non-performance of their agreement. The plea, in the present case, seems intentionally insincere: the Firm is under an obligation to me to publish my Five act Tragedy, ‘ The Duchess of Padua,’ the manuscript of which they have never seen, nor expressed any desire to see: nor was the MS. of ‘ Salomé’ submitted to them beforehand: any desire on the part of Mr. Lane to have the MS. of my French play submitted to him for his approval would I fear have excited considerable amusement in myself and in others. : ‘‘T am at present in favour of entrusting my plays to Mr. Mathews, whose literary enthusiasm about them has much gratified me, and to leave to Mr. Lane the imcomparable privilege of publishing ‘The Sphinx,’ ‘ Salomé,’ and my beautiful story on Shakespeare’s sonnets.’’ Etc. ‘«¢ .) 6 The selection of reviews to which the book is sent must be a matter of arrangement between you and your partner and me. A book of this kind— very rare and curious, must, not be thrown into the gutter of English journalism. No book of mine, for instance, ever goes to the National Observer. I wrote to Henley to tell him so, two years ago. He is too coarse, too offensive, too personal, to be sent any work of mine. I hope that the book will be subscribed for before publication, and that as few as possible will be sent for review. Where in a magazine of art, either French or English, we know that an important apprecia- tion will be written, we can send a copy, but ordinary English newspapers are not merely valueless, but would do harm, just as they are trying in every way to harm ‘Salomé,’ though they have not read it. ae ‘‘T wd. not contemplate assigning to you the copyright of so important a poem for so small an honorarium as £10, but will do so, it being clearly under- stood that no new edition is to be brought out without my sanction: 1 mean no such thing as a popular or cheap edition, is to be brought out: nor are you to be able to assign the right of publishing the poem to any other Firm. You will see that this is quite a reasonable demand on my part. ‘‘T hope the ‘ Sphinx’ will be a gt. success.’”’ Kte. ‘““The cover of Salomé is quite dreadful—don’t spoil a lovely book. Have simply a folded vellum wrapper with the design in scarlet—much deeper and much better—the texture of the present cover is coarse and common—it is quite impossible—and spoils the real beauty of the interior. Use up this horrid Irish stuff for stories, etc.—don’t inflict it on a work of art, like Salomé. “Tt really will do you a great deal of harm—everyone will say that it 1s coarse and inappropriate. I loathe it. So does Beardsley.’’

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