Oscar Wilde's Most Intimate Work:
De Profundis, First Edition, One of Only 50 Copies on Japanese Vellum
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"The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion." |
| "Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility." |
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| WILDE, Oscar. De Profundis.
London: Methuen and Co., (1905). Octavo, original limp vellum gilt, top
edge gilt, uncut and partially unopened. $10,000.
Extraordinarily rare first edition, one of only 50 copies printed on Japanese vellum, of Wilde's deeply personal and emotional account of his thoughts and state of mind during his imprisonment at Reading Gaol. The last prose work by Wilde and the only work he wrote during his incarceration. Bookplate. Only light soiling and bowing to covers (as always); interior in pristine condition. Most rare. |