WILDE, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854-1900). Poems. London: Chiswick Press, Charles Whittingham and Co. for David Bogue, 1882.
8° (189 x 126mm). (Occasional, very light spotting and marking.) Original vellum gilt, upper and lower boards with gilt prunus-blossom designs after Charles Ricketts, spine lettered in gilt at the head and tail enclosing prunus-blossom design after Ricketts, top edge gilt, others uncut (light offsetting on free endpapers, extremities lightly rubbed, lightly marked and scuffed). Provenance: Gabriel Sarrazin (b. 1853, presentation inscription on front free endpaper 'à mon ami , Gabriel Sarrazin, , souvenir et , amitie. , Oscar Wilde. , Jany. , 89.', and by direct descent to the vendor).
'FIFTH' EDITION, ONE OF 250 COPIES, OF WHICH ONLY 20 OR 30 WERE ISSUED UNDER BOGUE'S IMPRINT. PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY WILDE TO SARRAZIN. Wilde and Bogue drew up a contract for the publication of Poems on 17 May 1881, and 750 copies were printed in June of that year, issued in three separate editions of 250 copies during 1881, in a binding decorated with prunus-blossom designs by Ricketts (the first design was only used for the first edition, after which it was replaced by a second, which was used for the bindings of the second to fifth editions). In January 1882 a further 500 copies were printed with the textual revisions noted by Mason; 250 copies were issued as the fourth edition and this was followed by the present, fifth edition. However, Bogue was declared bankrupt in August 1882, and his stock, including the unsold copies of the fifth edition, was taken over by Chatto & Windus, before they passed to Elkin Mathews and John Lane some ten years later. In October 1891 Mathews wrote to Wilde stating that he had ordered 230 cancel title pages for a new edition, although only 220 unspoilt titles were received by Mathews, and the 'Author's Edition' of the Poems was published in May 1892 in a signed edition with a printed limitation of 200 copies. Therefore at most 30 -- and possibly as few as 20 -- copies of the fifth edition were ever published with Bogue's imprint. Wilde had corresponded with the French critic in 1885, before meeting him in September 1888, and Sarrazin contributed to the March 1889 issue of Woman's World, which Wilde edited. Mason 308.