Wilde (Oscar) Newdigate Prize Poem. Ravenna, first
Wilde (Oscar) Newdigate Prize Poem. Ravenna, first edition, armorial device on title and upper cover, 16pp., original printed wrappers bound in, later salmon pink half straight-grain morocco, gilt, by Hatchards, t.e.g., [Mason 301], 8vo, Oxford, Thos. Shrimpton and Son, 1878.
⁂ Wilde's first published book. "During a vacation ramble in 1877 he started for Greece, [and] visiting Ravenna by chance on the way, he obtained material for a poem on that ancient city, and singularly enough 'Ravenna' was afterwards given out as the topic for the Newdigate competition." (The Aesthetic Movement in England by Walter Hamilton, 1882.)
This and the following 5 lots are uniformly bound and each book bears the bookplate of Sir William Eden, Bart., (occasionally inserted upside-down on the rear pastedown).
Sir William Morton Eden, 7th Baronet of West Auckland and 5th Baronet of Maryland, of Windlestone Hall, County Durham, was father of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon. He was an eccentric and irascible man, a brilliant huntsman, talented watercolourist, and early collector of impressionist pictures. In the words of his son Sir Timothy: '...he was induced neither by poverty nor obscurity of birth, nor by timidity — for he was physically and morally fearless — nor by the slightest vestige of self-discipline, to restrain the exuberance of his feelings. Nature had showered upon him with an uncontrolled hand her gifts and her curses alike, and without control he received them all, and without control he expended them.' He had a celebrated legal dispute with Whistler over a portrait he had commissioned of Lady Eden. See: 1) Timothy Eden, The Tribulations of a Baronet, (Macmillan, 1933, 2nd Edition The Spredden Press, 1990) 2) Whistler, James McNeill, Eden versus Whistler: The Baronet and the Butterfly. A Valentine with a Verdict, Paris and New York, 1899.
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Wilde (Oscar) Newdigate Prize Poem. Ravenna, first edition, armorial device on title and upper cover, 16pp., original printed wrappers bound in, later salmon pink half straight-grain morocco, gilt, by Hatchards, t.e.g., [Mason 301], 8vo, Oxford, Thos. Shrimpton and Son, 1878.
⁂ Wilde's first published book. "During a vacation ramble in 1877 he started for Greece, [and] visiting Ravenna by chance on the way, he obtained material for a poem on that ancient city, and singularly enough 'Ravenna' was afterwards given out as the topic for the Newdigate competition." (The Aesthetic Movement in England by Walter Hamilton, 1882.)
This and the following 5 lots are uniformly bound and each book bears the bookplate of Sir William Eden, Bart., (occasionally inserted upside-down on the rear pastedown).
Sir William Morton Eden, 7th Baronet of West Auckland and 5th Baronet of Maryland, of Windlestone Hall, County Durham, was father of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon. He was an eccentric and irascible man, a brilliant huntsman, talented watercolourist, and early collector of impressionist pictures. In the words of his son Sir Timothy: '...he was induced neither by poverty nor obscurity of birth, nor by timidity — for he was physically and morally fearless — nor by the slightest vestige of self-discipline, to restrain the exuberance of his feelings. Nature had showered upon him with an uncontrolled hand her gifts and her curses alike, and without control he received them all, and without control he expended them.' He had a celebrated legal dispute with Whistler over a portrait he had commissioned of Lady Eden. See: 1) Timothy Eden, The Tribulations of a Baronet, (Macmillan, 1933, 2nd Edition The Spredden Press, 1990) 2) Whistler, James McNeill, Eden versus Whistler: The Baronet and the Butterfly. A Valentine with a Verdict, Paris and New York, 1899.
