The Sphinx by Oscar Wilde - 1901

London & New York: John Lane Company, 1910. [46]pp [bookplate; spine backing completely chipped away exposing gauze; some discolorations to boards]. Illustrated Boards. Fair. 16mo - over 5¾" - 6¾" tall.

John Lane, Bodley Head, London. 1918. Small 8vo, 46pp plus two pages of advertisments. A good hardback copy bound in pale green papered boards with illustrated front cover. Boards lightly bowed with wear to extremities and slight discolouration and creasing to spine. Tick mark in black pen to top corner of cover. Foxing to fore edges and end papers. Lower part of rear endpaper split.

London: John Lane, 1918. Beardsley. 12mo, pp. 46. Paper over boards, spine mended with paper tape. Some foxing throughout, cover little soiled. Good. Cover illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. A poem.

New York: R. F. Fenno & Company, 1894. Hard Cover with Dust Jacket. Very Good/Very Good. 12mo (4 1/2" x 7 3/8"), stiff pictorial wraps, 22 pages; half title with date of 1894; original glassine dust jacket and original box, with printed label: "The Sphinx. Wilde Nippon Booklets." Early edition, printed in America. Pictorial front wrapper, with color rural scene, with Mt. Fiji in the background. A lovely edition. Book and dust jacket are very good; box has a few light stains, but is very good. Not in Mason.

First edition limited to 1000 copies that cannot be reprinted.9 beautiful tissue protected plates by Alastair. A very good copy in decorated boards with some slight soiling to cover. Attached to the inside cover is an original water color signed D.H. Pinder

London: The Bodley Head New York: John Lane Company: John Lane, 1920. Limited Edition . Hardcover. Near Fine. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. ALASTAIR [i.e. VOIGT Hans H.] 1887-1969. Superb illustrations! First limited edition, in gilt printed cream buckram, gilt title to spine, light edge finger marking. Internally, half title, frontis, [1], 36 pp, 12 pls (each with a printed guard), 13 large initial letters, all coloured in black & teal, t.e.g., remainder uncut, cover designed design by Charles Ricketts, pencil name to fpd (B Wood 1921), some light offsetting to fep. (299*226 mm). Wilde first published the Spinx in 1894, and this edition is limited to 1,000 copies & cannot be reprinted, as the stones from which the offset plates were printed were in Belgium at the time of the German invasion, and were destroyed.

London: Privately printed, 1901. Limited numbered pirated edn (30 of 300). Tall 8vo (10 x 8 ins). Bound in half maroon crushed levant morocco by C. Walters, top edge gilt (outer joints rubbed - otherwise bright VG). Pp. 32 printed on Japan vellum, with original wrapper bound-in at rear, versos alternately illustrated with a head of a sphinx or Christ on the cross (Richard Le Gallienne bookplate on front paste-down and catalogue entry from John C. Tomlinson sale of January 17-18 1918 tipped-in on front free endpaper; bookplate of Morton Burr Stelle on rear paste-down).

London: Elkin Matthews and John Lane, at the sign of the Bodley Head, 1894. RICKETTS, Charles. . The Sphinx. With decorations by Charles Ricketts. London: Elkin Matthews and John Lane, at the sign of the Bodley Head, 1894. Full Description: WILDE, Oscar. The Sphinx. With decorations by Charles Ricketts. London: Elkin Matthews and John Lane, at the sign of the Bodley Head, 1894. First edition. One of 200 copies for Great Britain, printed on handmade paper. Small quarto (8 5/8 x 6 3/4 inches; 218 x 172 mm). [4, blank], [6], [27], [1, blank], [1, imprint], [5, blank] pp. Title-page printed in black, red, and green. Ten illustrations by Ricketts in the text (including title-page), of which eight are full-page, all printed in red. Initial letters (one large and twelve medium) and guide words printed in green. Original vellum, decoratively paneled and pictorially stamped in gilt after designs by Ricketts, whose monogram appears in the lower left-hand corners. Gilt is bright and vellum generally clean.… Read More

London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane at The Sign of The Bodley Head, 1894, 1894. FIRST EDITION. 1 vol., 8-1/2" x 7", illustrated by Charles Rickets, limited to 200 copies, printed in 3 colors, bound in original art nouveau gilt decorated vellum, covers straight (often found quite bowed), inner and outer hinges fine, head and foot of spine fine, foxing to one side of the first 8 leaves (typical), previous owners bookplate to front pastedown, housed in a 1/2 red morocco clamshell slipcase, raised bands gilt decorated spine, overall still a VERY GOOD copy. Charles Ricketts's art nouveau illustrations, were described by W. E. Henley, Wilde's harshest critic, as "about as fin-de-Siecle a business as you ever saw" (Frankel, p. 155). Ricketts considered the designs for the illustrations and for the original vellum binding amongst his best work. While predominantly working with book illustration and design, Ricketts was also famed for his theater designs and costumes, and he… Read More

London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1894. [44]p (including blanks), original gilt decorated vellum designed by Charles Ricketts, with his monogram to bottom left hand corner of upper cover and the monogram of the binders (Leighton, Son and Hodge) to the bottom left hand corner of the lower cover. Corners slightly bumped and rubbed, vellum generally quite bright and clean. Internally some light browning to page edges, some light foxing to several pages (as often), but generally fairly clean. Small booksellers label and previous owners book plate to front paste down. Printed in three colours throughout. Stated one of two hundred copies for the UK, with another fifty printed for the US and twenty-five large paper copies (and possibly a few more). Now housed in a cloth drop back box by Temple Bookbinders. Holbrook Jackson called 'The Sphinx' "'the most remarkable of the books of this period' because it translated the Wildean temperament into physical form ... Ricketts created a… Read More