THE OSCHOLARS
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Vol. IV

Nos. 4-9

Issues no 35-41: April-September 2007

SOME SELL AND OTHERS BUY

A monthly report on Wilde and related subjects for sale.

Readers are invited to advertise (free) for items sought or for sale / exchange.

Click for the main pages of this issue of THE OSCHOLARS
For the Table of Contents, click To hub page To THE OSCHOLARS home page

Please mention THE OSCHOLARS if ordering or inquiring, as this will help keep us on mailing lists.

It is taking a while to re-establish contact with booksellers, but we hope this page will be an early port of call for those seeking (or wanting) books on Wilde and the fin-de-siècle. It will, we hope, also serve to chart fluctuating prices. Obviously it can never replace such facilities as Abe or Amazon, but we hope that it will offer background to our other pages.

I. Auctions		IV. Bookshops & Publishers
II. Books		V. Ebay
III. Posters		VI. Endpiece

I. AUCTIONS

When we are back on schedule we plan to increase our coverage of the auction rooms.

II. BOOKS

A list of books offered by Delectus Books was published in our December 2006 edition: further selections were given in January and February 2007. Some of these may still be available. Books offered by Delectus (and others) relating to the fin-de-siècle in France will be found in our sister publication Rue des beaux arts. Delectus can be found at www.delectusbooks.com.

Booksellers may contact us as oscholar@gmail.com with lists of their 1890s material.

III. POSTERS

FOOTLIGHTS Gallery & Gifts, 240 East Main Street, Ashland, OR 97520, USA, Phone & Fax: 541-488-5538 (Voice: 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. Pacific Time, 18:00-2:00 UTC) (Fax: 24 hours) E-mail: footlite@cdsnet.net specialises in theatre posters. No Wilde posters are currently offered but we note the following:

BELLE EPOQUE 2004 Lincoln Center Theater production, Art by James McMullan 14x22" Cardstock $25;
DANCE OF DEATH Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren star in Strindberg's classic 14x22" Cardstock $25;
DRACULA 2004 Broadway production. Music by Frank Wildhorn 14x22" Cardstock $18;
HEDDA GABLER Limited Printing Roundabout Theatre Company Production With Kelly McGillis, Art by Scott McKowen 14x22" Paper $25;
JEKYLL & HYDE 1997 Broadway Production 14x22" Cardstock $20;
TURN OF THE SCREW Acting Company production. Jeffrey Hatcher adaptation. Art by Scott McKowen 13x19" Poster Stock $25.
VINCENT AT BRIXTON 2003 Lincoln Center Production Play by Nicholas Wright about van Gogh in London. Directed by Richard Eyre; 14x22" Cardstock $20.

poster

The company AllPosters has a selection of Wilde-related (and of course other) posters, prints and photographs that it sells on-line. At the moment of last consultation, only one item was offered, the photograph below. This is ‘Digitally Printed on Archival Photographic Paper resulting in vivid, pure color and exceptional detail that is suitable for museum or gallery display.’ It comes in various sizes and prices: 46 x 61 cm 44, 26 €; 61 x 81 cm 53,12 €; 76 x 102 cm; 73,78 €; 30 x 41 cm 29,50 €.

AllPosters offer a number of Sarah Bernhhardt posters, of which we will be publishing one in each issue of THE OSCHOLARS. This month:

The site can be reached by clicking on the picture below, which is one of those that has been for sale in the past.

Tite Street

We also draw readers’ attention to the International Poster Gallery, which specialises in Vintage posters, though the use of this term is rather imprecise.

1890

IV. BOOKSHOPS & PUBLISHERS

One of the very few London bookshops that was known to Wilde and survives to this day was Hatchard’s, and its general manager at the time, Arthur Humphreys, was a close friend of Constance Wilde’s. Wilde is one of the six customers named on their website. Hatchard’s is at 187 Piccadilly, and its website can be reached by clicking its picture to the left.
Opening Hours: Monday to Saturday 9.30 - 7.00 p.m., Sunday 12.00 - 6.00 p.m. Telephone 020 7439 9921

Galignani’s, 224 rue de Rivoli, is a few steps from the Hôtel Wagram (now no longer an hotel), where the Wildes stayed on their honeymoon. The oldest English bookshop on the Continent, one imagines that it has little changed to-day. The photograph is of Charles Jeancourt Galignani, the proprietor in Wilde’s day. Click the photograph for Galignani’s splendid website.

We also like to commend the following bookshops because they salute Oscar Wilde. We are interested to know of others.

Oscar Wilde Buchhandlung und Versand at Alte Gasse 51, 60313 Frankfurt Tel.: 069/28 12 60 Fax: 069/297 75 42. Internet: http://www.oscar-wilde.de; e-mail: shop@oscar-wilde.de.

Dorian Bookstore, 802 Elm at Madison, Youngstown, Ohio 44505-2843. This, however, is no longer present at its Internet: http://alt.youngstown.org/dorian.html (although our search engine still locates it there) and perhaps a reader has news?

The Oscar Wilde Book Shop (15 Christopher Street, New York, NY 10014 E-mail: wildebooks@aol.com) now has a website at www.oscarwildebooks.com. This shop (in Greenwich Village) was founded in 1967, was the world's first gay bookshop. After many crises it is now owned and managed by Kim Brinster.

Also specialising in the fin-de-siècle is Le Lien et le Ligne, the bookshop of M. Bruno Leclercq, which can be found at http://www.ligne-et-lien.com/. This is more than an on-line bookseller, more of a site dedicated to its subject by an enthusiast. Among the books offered at the moment for a modest 13 € is Frank Harris: Ma vie et mes amours. Traduction de Madeleine Vernon et H. D. Davray. Gallimard, 1960, in-8, broché, 540 pp., pliures au dos, bel exemplaire non coupé.

‘Ses souvenirs trop sulfureux pour les pays anglo-saxons, furent tout d'abord publiés hors commerce en anglais en France. Frank Harris fut l'un des rares écrivains du Royaume-Unis à prendre la défense de son ami Oscar Wilde. Ecrivain et journaliste il fut aussi cow-boy dans le Far-West (cette partie de sa vie fit l'objet d'un film), Harris connut bien des personnages importants, mais ce sont les femmes qui l'ont sans doute le plus interréssé.’

We also recommend another French site, Edition Originale. Click its strangely attenuated colophon to go straight to its Wilde items, eighteen at time of writing.

Offstage Bookshop opened in 1982 as London's only specialist theatre and film bookshop. They stock an extensive range of technical and theoretical books in the performing arts and film. Their primary strength is the wide selection of titles stocked, and ability to find any book you need quickly and with no fuss. They now describe themselves as ‘firmly embedded’ in Treadwell’s Bookshop, in Covent Garden. (34 Tavistock Street, London WC2E 7PB). Treadwell’s itself is known for stocking books and arranging talks concerned with the writers of the decadence, with a leaning towards the occult.

Offstage has a website, www.offstagebooks.com which offers customers a worldwide mail order service. Offstage also provides offsite bookstalls at festivals and conferences for teachers and practitioners.

We draw your attention to The Peacock Mirror which offers on-line a selection of books, prints and other products focusing on Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist and fin-de-siècle art. For a while off the screen, it has now returned in revived spirits. Click the image below for their website.

Last year we reproduced pictures of the calendars offered through this site. Here are three for 2008:

We here add the names of independent publishers who specialise in the books of the period. The Rivendale Press, our own publisher, gets special mention. It list can be found at http://www.rivendalepress.com/index.html.

Elsewhere in this edition of THE OSCHOLARS we have mentioned the books being published by Callum James. His list can be consulted at http://members.aol.com/callumjames1000/callumjamesbooks/home.html.

We plan to increase this list and hope readers across the world will assist.

V. EBAY

Ebay is an on-line auction house where many Wilde items are offered, from second-hand paperbacks to playbills to limited editions: 392 items when we looked for this issue, 387 for the previous one. We have set up this link –––-> which will take you straight to ebay's Wilde pages.

This month we select for illustration the following, which were recently on offer:

"Sketch Of Oscar Wilde" Original Line Etching c1895 By Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French 1864-1901) Signed in the plate "TL". 6" x 9" Professionally Matted and Glass-Framed 11" x 14"

From LIFE (weekly satirical magazine, before it changed to the new format and larger size that is more familiar) Double page Wilde print, ‘The Land of Promise and Pay’.

This Playbill is from Opening Night, November 16, 1972, at the Playhouse Theatre, for Dear Oscar, a musical based on the life of Oscar Wilde. The show, which closed after only five performances, starred Richard Kneeland, Jack Bittner, Tommy Breslin, Lynn Brinker, Nancy Cushman, Len Gochman, Bruce Heighley, Jane Hoffman, Gary Krawford, Kimberly Vaughn and Russ Thacker. Book and lyrics by Caryl Gabrielle Young, music by Addy O. Fieger, production supervised by John Allen.

Playbill, 60 pages, is in very good condition. Light corner creasing, slight discoloration to covers and pages

Finally, we still revel in this piece of kitsch, described as a framed print of the statue by Jeanne Rynhart of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Park, Dublin, because one cannot have a print of a statue, it is not in Merrion Park, and it is not by Jeanne Rynhart. Which all goes to show…

Descriptions are those of the booksellers, and without any reason for disbelief, nonetheless THE OSCHOLARS cannot vouch for their accuracy (while sometimes appreciating their quaintness).

VI. FINALLY...

This odd manikin, which represents Oscar Wilde as he is perceived and as he never was, is available from http://howcool.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=24401

Click for the main pages of this issue of THE OSCHOLARS
For the Table of Contents, click To hub page To THE OSCHOLARS home page