Oscar Wilde’s long letter from prison, written to Lord Alfred Douglas
Written in Reading Gaol, it reflects on suffering, responsibility, love and artistic identity. This is a Putnam printing under the revised 1909 copyright, in red leather with gilt lettering.
The story
Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis while he was a prisoner in Reading Gaol, and he wrote it as a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas. Readers first met it in an edited form, published in 1905; the text in this book follows the revised copyright Putnam took out in 1909.
What a reader finds is a famous writer, deprived of his freedom, working out what his suffering meant and what he himself was answerable for. Around the letter this volume gathers a prefatory dedication by Robert Ross to Dr. Max Meyerfeld, letters from Reading Prison and further material, so the prison writing comes with some of its surrounding story.
This copy belongs to Putnam’s Ravenna series, a uniform run of later editions rather than the first, bound in flexible red leather with an ornate gilt spine and a gilt facsimile of Wilde’s signature on the front. It has been well handled: the leather is rubbed and scuffed and worn through at the foot of the spine and the corners. A scraped patch on the front pastedown suggests that a bookplate or label was once removed. The text pages photographed are clean and legible.
Details
- Date
- 1909 (revised copyright)
- Publisher
- G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London
- Edition
- Ravenna Edition, 1909 revised copyright
- Binding
- full_leather: Flexible red leather with gilt author facsimile to front and gilt ornamental spine; worn; as photographed
- Condition
- Flexible red leather binding with ornate gilt spine and facsimile gilt Oscar Wilde lettering on front board. Significant rubbing and scuffing to boards, edges, spine ends and corners, including worn leather at spine foot and forecorners. Front pastedown has a large abraded patch consistent with removal of a former bookplate or label; rear pastedown shows extensive irregular discoloration and surface abrasion/paper loss of uncertain cause. A handwritten date 'May 3, 1921' appears on a front endpaper (not Wilde's signature). Photographed text leaves appear legible and reasonably clean; complete pagination and gatherings not collated. No dust jacket shown.
- Inscription
- May 3, 1921
