[WILDE, Oscar].

Lot 1634
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Estimation :
6000 - 8000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 44 231EUR
[WILDE, Oscar].
An Ideal Husband by the Author of Lady Windermere's Fan. London, Leonard Smithers and co, 1899. In-8 [210 x 154] of (8) ff, 213 pp, (1) blank f. : publisher's pink cloth boards, gilt designs on boards and spine, untrimmed. First edition : edition of 1 000 copies on laid paper, without author's name. Brilliant comedy first performed in 1895. Precious autograph letter signed : To // my friend // André Gide : // memory // of friendship : // Oscar // Wilde The meeting of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was, for André Gide, capital. They met in November 1891: Wilde was 37 years old, Gide 22. The young man was fascinated: "The aesthete Oscar Wilde, oh admirable, admirable that one" he confessed to Paul Valéry. Shortly afterwards, in his Diary, he made a harsher judgment - "with him, I have unlearned to think." But their meeting in Algeria in 1895, which Gide recounted in Si le grain ne meurt (If the grain does not die), was to turn the writer's life upside down: thanks to Wilde, who played the role of matchmaker, Gide was able to become what he was. Since then," he wrote later, "every time I have sought pleasure, it has been to run after the memory of that night." André Gide was, with Robert Ross, one of the few to remain faithful to Oscar Wilde at the end of his life. After his death, he dedicated a fraternal book to him, published by Mercure de France (1910): Oscar Wilde, in memoriam (Memories). A very nice copy in the publisher's hardback.
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