Woman of no Importance, A.

London: John Lane., 1894. A Woman of No Importance - Wilde Before the Fall"
First Edition, One of 500 Copies - The Slocum Copy

WILDE, Oscar. A Woman of No Importance. London: John Lane, 1894.

First edition. One of 500 copies.

Small quarto (8 1/4 x 5 7/8 inches; 210 x 150 mm.). [16], 134, [1], [1, blank], [16, publisher's catalogue dated March 1894] pp.

Publisher's light red-brown linen over boards, covers decoratively stamped in gilt, spine decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt, the design by Charles Shannon. All edges uncut. Light rubbing to extremities; front inner hinge cracked but holding. Otherwise an excellent, entirely unrestored example.

The first edition of Wilde's third society comedy, published in the same year as Salomé and on the eve of the triumph of An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. The play explores themes of social hypocrisy, gender inequality, and moral duplicity - subjects that Wilde would refine and perfect in his later dramatic masterpieces.

Issued in a limitation of 500 copies by John Lane at The Bodley Head, the edition shares the elegant typographic and binding aesthetic of Wilde's 1890s publications, with the characteristic gilt design by Charles Shannon.

Complete with the publisher's catalogue dated March 1894, as called for.

Provenance:

The Myles Standish Slocum copy, with his pencil note on the front paste-down.

Myles Standish Slocum (1887-1956) was a noted American collector of first and rare editions, remembered both for the quality of his library and for his encouragement of book collecting through the annual Scripps College prize bearing his name.