The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection Andrea Lloyd

Mary Viscountess Eccles’s celebrated collection of books, manuscripts, works of art and memorabilia relating to Oscar Wilde was bequeathed to the British Library in 2003. A philanthropist and anglophile, Lady Eccles was one of the library’s most munificent benefactors of recent years. Born Mary Morley Crapo in Detroit on 12 July 1912, Lady Eccles was an avid book collector and bibliophile of international repute. She was the first woman elected to the Roxburghe Club, and one of the first to join the Grolier Club in New York City, of which she was later elected president. Together with her first husband Donald Hyde (1909-1966), she built up what is widely considered to be the world’s finest collection of rare books and manuscripts relating to Samuel Johnson and his biographer and friend, James Boswell. After Donald Hyde died, it was her interest in the world of books which brought her into contact with her second husband, Viscount Eccles (1904-1999), Chairman of the British Library from 1973 to 1978. The collection was housed in a purpose built library in her New Jersey home, Four Oaks Farm, to which she readily granted access to researchers, writers and scholars from all over the world. Her collection fed her own research interests, and she contributed some important scholarly works on a variety of subjects. She also built close relationships with other collectors and interested parties, and generously loaned her collection to exhibitions and museums to allow others to appreciate its richness, including the British Library centenary exhibition Oscar Wilde: a life in six acts (10 November 2000 – 4 February 2001). About the Wilde collection Mary and Donald Hyde’s bibliophily was not limited to the eighteenth century. They also developed an Oscar Wilde collection which is second only in size to that of the University of California, containing over 2000 items. The foundations of the collection were laid when they acquired Wilde’s correspondence with his friend Reginald Turner. Their interest in Wilde’s life and writings thus fuelled, acquisitions of related material rapidly followed. The importance of the collection was elevated considerably in 1962, through the purchase of H. Montgomery Hyde’s Wilde collection. Later additions from the libraries of Mortimer L. Schiff and Lord Alfred Douglas, and acquisitions from Wilde’s bibliographer Christopher Millard (alias Stuart Mason), his literary executor and friend Robert Ross and his son Vyvyan Holland among others, contributed to the creation of the largest Wilde collection in private hands.1 Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and author. In addition to becoming one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era, his natural wit and charm helped him to become one of the greatest celebrities of his age. His works have endured to this day and continue to be widely performed and adapted. Wilde’s celebrity status turned to notoriety after he was found guilty of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labour. On his release from prison he went directly to France, where he died in poverty two years later.

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H. Montgomery Hyde, ‘Oscar Wilde’, in Gabriel Austin (ed.), Four Oaks Library (Somerville, NJ, 1967), pp. 85-92.

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The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection

The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde collection complements the British Library’s existing holdings in this area, giving prominence to some of the extraordinary items already in the collection. Enormous attention to detail has been paid to compiling the collection, with the acquisition parameters set wide to encompass works pertaining to Wilde, his friends and family and the literary and artistic world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Great Britain. Although it covers a broad range, the collection can be divided into three categories: manuscripts, printed books and ephemera (or ‘Wildeana’, which includes newspaper cuttings, playbills, posters, leaflets, music scores, LPs and even a set of postage stamps). The printed collection The printed collection comprises over 1500 volumes, covering a broad sphere, including translations of his works into languages ranging from Armenian to Esperanto. Wilde has gradually grown in popularity and marketability since his death, which has given rise to an incalculable number of editions of his works, both in Great Britain and abroad. This, combined with the scandal associated with his name and the deficiency of international copyright rules in the nineteenth century, has resulted in a large number of unauthorized editions and privately printed pamphlets, all of which provide rich pickings for the modern first edition collector. Oscar Wilde’s literary opus contains an eclectic mix of genres and artistic styles, including plays, stories, poems, essays and a novel. This is in addition to his superb academic credentials and profitable journalistic career. Despite this, at the time of his death, Wilde’s writing was considered by some to be relatively unremarkable, when compared to the work of his contemporaries, such as Walter Pater. His works were labelled unintellectual and mediocre, falling way below the scholarly standard required for an author’s works to endure.2 However, over time his popularity has flourished, his works have never been out of print, and his quips, one-liners and epigrams are continually quoted. A variety of scholarly editions of his works are now available, in addition to the inordinate quantity of popular, illustrated, small collections or private press editions that have been published over the last 100 years. The Eccles collection contains examples of all his works, represented in a range of formats, including monographs and literary periodical contributions. The collection contains a wealth of author’s presentation copies. All of the significant people in Wilde’s life are honoured with personal inscriptions, which demonstrate his relationship to them and the fondness or gratitude he felt towards them. Wilde’s colourful character is recognizable even in the few short lines he has written in each volume, such as his inscription to his wife Constance, in Poems (1882), ‘To a poem from a poet’, or a few years later, after events had taken a more solemn turn in The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898): ‘Willie Callan, in affection and admiration, from his friend, who wrote this Ballad of Pain. Paris, ’98’ (fig. 1). Other recipients of inscribed presentation copies include Lady Wilde (Wilde’s mother), Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom Wilde had an intimate and devastating relationship), Lionel Johnson (who introduced Wilde to Douglas) and even Robert Browning, whom Wilde greatly admired. In addition to the unique author presentation and association copies held in the collection, there are several extremely rare editions of limited print runs, such as Vera; or the Nihilists (1880), of which only two copies are known to survive. The Eccles’ Vera is an acting edition, inscribed by the author to Genevieve Ward, a celebrated nineteenth-century singer and actress – highlighting Wilde’s connections to many fashionable individuals of his day.3

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For a summary of the various criticisms see Merlin Holland, ‘Introduction to the 1994 edition’ of Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow, 1994), pp. 1-6. Vera is a melodramatic tragedy set in Russia. It was the first play that Wilde wrote. It ran in New York in 1882 but was not a success and folded after just a week.

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Fig. 1. An author-inscribed copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). Eccles 9.

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Practically every new edition of Wilde’s work published during and shortly after his lifetime has some manner of interesting story behind its publication. They are not just books but reflections of a brilliant, controversial author’s life and as such represent so much more than the words printed on their pages. One of the highlights of the collection is Wilde’s first edition of poems. Published at his own expense, he presented a copy to the Library of the Oxford Union, with his manuscript inscription dated Oct. 27th 1881, only for them to refuse the gift on the grounds of it being immoral and derivative (this is the only authorial presentation copy which the Oxford Union has ever refused).4 The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) caused a measure of controversy when it was first published, due to its focus on hedonism and allusions to homosexuality. First published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in June 1890, and appearing in revised and extended book form a year later, published by Ward, Lock and Co. (fig. 2), it resulted in a frenzied press debate about art and morality, despite Wilde’s curtailing of some of the more homoerotic overtones in the 1891 edition. Shortly afterwards, Salome (1891), a tragedy based on the New Testament, was banned from being performed in London by the Lord Chamberlain’s licenser on the basis that it was illegal to depict Biblical characters on the stage. An English translation of the original French text, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, was published in 1894, but was shrouded in complications. Lord Alfred Douglas originally translated the text, but the result was so unsatisfactory that Wilde ended up translating it himself and Douglas’s name was removed from the title page to the dedication. In addition, the publisher John Lane expressed concerns over Beardsley’s lascivious illustrations, which featured caricatures of Wilde’s face in some of the scenes and displayed overtly sexual references, which highlighted the homoerotic and sexual subtexts of the play. Wilde’s true opinion of these illustrations is obscured by conflicting contemporary reports of both his approval and displeasure and therefore remains ambiguous.5 One certainty is that the black and white images are now considered to be fine examples of art nouveau design and are cultural icons of the 1890s. The publications of many of Wilde’s works are inextricably linked to the lives and works of many notable individuals of his day. The publisher Leonard Smithers, known at the height of his career for publishing pornography and audacious books by many of the decadent poets and artists of the time, was one of these. Smithers was the only publisher who dared to publish the Ballad of Reading Gaol after Wilde’s release from prison. The author statement in early editions of Reading Gaol reads only ‘C.3.3’, Wilde’s cell number in prison. His name was not inserted until the 7th edition (1899), serving as yet another sign of the author’s fall from grace. After Smithers fell bankrupt in 1900, he began pirating books to which he no longer had legal rights, including a number of Wilde’s works for which he used various imprints, such as Mathurin Press (used for publication of The Harlot’s House) and Melmoth & Co (used for a 1904 edition of Salome).6 The Eccles collection holds many of these editions, which simultaneously serve as examples of Wilde’s profitability and notoriety, and Smithers’s love for beautifully bound and illustrated books. False imprints protect publishers from prosecution for printing unauthorized editions, which deny the literary estate a share of the profits. Unauthorized texts also elude editorial control over their content and consequently they are often incomplete, poorly edited or set. The numerous unauthorized editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a particular favourite of book pirates, are a testament to this. The paucity of international copyright agreements in the nineteenth century resulted in an enormous amount of book piracy from Britain,

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Hyde, ‘Oscar Wilde’, pp. 85-92. Linda Zatlin, ‘Wilde, Beardsley, and the Making of Salome’, Journal of Victorian Culture, v (2000), pp. 341-57 Mathurin is derived from Oscar Wilde’s great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin, the author of Melmoth the Wanderer. Melmoth is taken from ‘Sebastian Melmoth’, the pseudonym Wilde used after his release from prison, derived from the title character in his great-uncle’s novel and from Saint Sebastian, a homosexual icon.

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Fig. 2. The title page of Salome (1894). Eccles 292.

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particularly in America, where until the 1890s American publishers continued to regard the work of a foreign (i.e., non-resident) author as unprotected ‘common’ property. Consequently there are in existence countless unauthorized American editions of Wilde’s works. A large number of these are featured in the collection, many of them with charming decorations and bindings. When copyright legislation became more structured, short print runs of one or two copies were often produced and registered at the Library of Congress or other national libraries in order to protect an author’s rights. The Eccles collection holds examples of these limited print runs, such as The Ballad of Reading Gaol, of which only six American editions were printed, and also The Suppressed Portion of De Profundis (1913), of which only fifteen copies were printed in the US to prevent Lord Alfred Douglas from quoting from it in his book Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914). Ghost written by T. H. Crosland, the book was Douglas’s reply to the accusations made by Wilde in his De Profundis (1905),7 a 50,000 word open letter written by Wilde during his time in Reading Gaol, addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas. Filled with bitter recriminations against Douglas for encouraging him to wanton away his life and distracting him from his work, the letter was passed to Robert Ross on Wilde’s release with the instructions to copy it and send the original to Douglas. Ross claimed to have carried out this request and published an abridged version of the letter in 1905, omitting Douglas’s name, and an extended version in 1908, after which he gave the original to the British Museum on the condition that its contents were not to be made public until 1960. Alfred Douglas denied having ever received the original and appears to have only discovered he was the intended recipient of the letter around 1912; this resulted in bitter retaliations and legal disputes between himself, Ross and the publisher. Periodical contributions Wilde contributed a great deal to periodicals of his day and was editor of The Woman’s World (1887), which he endeavoured to make ‘the recognised organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all sorts of literature and modern life’. Under Wilde’s editorship the magazine proved to be comparatively progressive for its time, addressing topical issues, such as women’s suffrage, to a readership of educated middle and upper class women. Wilde’s enthusiasm for his role eventually waned and he left the periodical after two years, by the end declining to contribute anything but literary notes. Two complete runs of this magazine are held in the Eccles collection, as well as many others, including the Chameleon, a periodical edited by Francis Bloxham to which Lord Alfred Douglas and Wilde both contributed. Although Wilde only contributed ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young’ to the first and only issue,8 his association with this magazine was used against him during his trial. The authorship of ‘The Priest and the Acolyte’ (1894) (which featured in the same issue and was penned by Bloxham), a story based on homosexual and blasphemous themes, was erroneously ascribed to Oscar Wilde during his trial; an assumption bolstered by the contents of some of his genuine works such as Dorian Gray, which was referred to as being ‘immoral and obscene’.9

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It was prevented from being published in its original form in England after Robert Ross obtained an injunction against Douglas and the publisher John Long Ltd, which sought to protect Wilde’s literary estate. The magazine ceased publication after the first number owing to the undesirable nature of some of its contents. A number of other works falsely attributed to Wilde during and after his prosecution feature in the collection, such as Robert Hichens’s The Green Carnation, a scandalous novel whose lead characters are closely based on Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas.

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The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection

The collection not only documents Wilde’s talent, but also his rise to fame and his rapid fall from grace following the court case brought about by Douglas’s father, John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry. The tempestuous Bosie’s ill-tempered father, the Marquess of Queensberry, despised Wilde, who he believed was corrupting his youngest son. The Marquess left his calling card at Wilde’s Club, branding him a sodomite. Based on this incident, against the advice of many of his friends, but under encouragement from Bosie, Wilde made a complaint of criminal libel against Queensberry. Affronted and indignant, Wilde refused to yield the challenge, despite the prosecution having armed themselves with a series of statements from witnesses to prove his sexual orientation. By the time Wilde agreed to withdraw, the damage was done and he was arrested for gross indecency. He appeared back at the Old Bailey in the dock a few weeks later, and after two criminal trials,10 the determined prosecution succeeded and Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison, eighteen months of which he served in Reading Gaol. The court cases bankrupted him, after which the contents of his elaborately decorated home in Tite Street, Chelsea were auctioned off. The sale catalogue in the Eccles collection reveals that everything, including the children’s toys and even the rabbit hutch was sold to pay off his debts. Correspondence between the newly-wed Wildes and E. W. Godwin, the architect whom they commissioned to design their London home, shows the attention to detail that was paid to its decoration. The letters highlight the impracticability of many of the designs, but also their beauty, with Wilde poetically describing each chair as ‘a sonnet in ivory’.11 After his downfall, the same chairs are described in the much more sombre and businesslike tone of Lot 180 in the sale catalogue.12 In addition to the furniture, Wilde’s precious library was also dispersed during the sale. A large number of books bearing Wilde’s manuscript ownership inscription have been reunited by Lady Eccles, including his own copy of The Happy Prince which he used to read aloud to his sons (Lot 53 in the Tite Street sale catalogue). Other volumes from his library include books from his days at Magdalen College, Oxford, which are heavily annotated by Wilde with notes clearly showing the influences on his later work and ideals. Wilde’s later years are represented by a copy of Walter Pater’s Imaginary Portraits (1890) with the ownership stamp of Reading Gaol, which he consulted and annotated during his time spent there. The catalogue lists almost 2000 volumes from Wilde’s library and the eclectic mix of titles shows his prodigious reading of other authors, and reminds us that Wilde was trained as a classical scholar (leaving Oxford with a double first in Classics) long before he was a writer of fairy tales and amusing plays. Book ornamentation Many of the books in the Eccles collection are in remarkable condition and continue to reflect the thought given to their beauty and appearance upon publication. Wilde was a household name in England long before any of his works met with critical acclaim. He was a champion of the aesthetic movement, a school of thought which believed that art should appeal to the senses and reflect beauty, rather than attempt to convey moral messages or serve any useful purpose. The movement was inspired by the likes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and James McNeill Whistler, all of whom can be seen to have exercised enormous influence over Wilde. His 1882 American lecture tour focused on the decorative arts, and is reflected in the collection by numerous press cuttings, parodies and advertisements, showing the impact that his flamboyant manners, dandified style and decadent ideals made on the US.

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The jury in the first trial was hung, but the authorities retried him. BL, Add. MSS. 81690, 81691, 81753. Catalogue of the Library of Valuable Books, Pictures … [by order of the Sheriff, 16 Tite St] (London: s.n., 1895).

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The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection

Wilde’s interest in the decorative arts naturally extended to the presentation of his works. The influence of Rossetti’s art nouveau book decorations, and the idea that the chance of success of a book lay in the beauty of its appearance, was not lost on Wilde, and he took great interest in the ornamentation of his publications. His Salome is one of the iconic illustrated books of the 1890s, and the controversy surrounding its content and association was never to leave him, even though Beardsley only ever designed this one piece for him. On the whole, Wilde seemed to prefer the style of Charles Ricketts and his partner Charles Shannon of the Vale Press, who between them were responsible for designing nearly all of Wilde’s books. The bindings are all of a well considered, dainty appearance. Ricketts’s abstract red, green and gilt art nouveau binding for The House of Pomegranates (1891), and the elegant asymmetry of The Sphinx (1894) in ivory vellum and gold are iconic of the period, representing one of the most important periods of book design (figs 3, 4). Wilde also exercised a huge influence over many other iconic books of the 1890s and later. Several editions of John Gray’s Silverpoints (1893) feature in the collection, including a rare vellum copy. Ricketts’s binding design and the peculiar shape of the volume endure as both a symbol of the art nouveau style and publishing fashions of the period. Gray was the young poet with whom Wilde had a relationship before he met Douglas, and was the figure who supposedly inspired Dorian Gray. Their close relationship is reflected in the fact that Wilde guaranteed the cost of publication of Silverpoints at his own risk.13 Biographical literature Above all else, Wilde was a socialite, whose penchant for fashionable society caused him to cross the paths of many eminent people of his day. Many of those fortunate enough to have known or met him came away with some anecdote to tell. Following his release from prison until a few years after his death, his name was taboo and, with the exception of a few close friends, many of those who had known him chose not to advertise the fact in public for fear of being involved in the scandal by association. However, gradually over the course of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of people sought to share their experiences of Wilde with the world, in order to defend his reputation, criticize his actions or make a small profit out of their memories. This resulted in an enormous amount of literature about his life and works. The Eccles collection holds an accumulation of the work of Wilde enthusiasts over the past century, encompassing a number of typescripts and marked up proof copies of works about Wilde and his social circle by notable personages such as Ellen Terry and Vincent O’Sullivan. The collection not only catalogues almost every major event in Wilde’s life, but also the lives of those to whom he was closest. Included are publications such as The Granta, the Cambridge University magazine, containing contributions by Robert Ross regarding the election of the dean, which resulted in his being thrown into a fountain by six other undergraduates, causing him to catch pneumonia and subsequently leave university.14 The level of detail of the collection also extends to a volume of Past and Present, which features illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley from when he was at Brighton Grammar School. With his Oxford and literary background, Wilde came into regular contact with many of the notable literary men of the time and became solid friends with a number of them, who all went on to leave their own impact on the world in some way. The collection includes works and biographies of his family members (his parents and his wife) and prominent

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Giles Barber, ‘Rossetti, Ricketts, & Some English Publishers’ Bindings of the Nineties’, The Library, 5th ser., xv (1970), pp. 314-30. Bruce Dickens, ‘Robert Ross at King’s’, The Cambridge Review (23 Jan. 1960).

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Fig. 3. The Sphinx (1894). Eccles 347.

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Fig. 4. A House of Pomegranates (1891). Eccles 95.

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figures such as Walter Sickert, Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm, Andre Gide, Ernest Dowson, Frank Harris, Arthur Symons and many more. Works such as The Yellow Book (fig. 5) and The Savoy paint a vivid picture of the feel of the age and represent the experimental and innovative decade of the 1890s. They also illustrate the far-reaching effect that Wilde had on those with whom he came into contact, both during and after his lifetime. For example, Aubrey Beardsley was forced to relinquish his role as art editor for the Yellow Book after volume IV (April 1895) partly because of his association with Wilde.15 Lord Alfred Douglas A prominent feature of the collection is the Lord Alfred Douglas material, which comprises his printed works, periodical contributions, and books from his own library. Famous for his role in Wilde’s downfall, he is also remembered by posterity for his spoilt and tempestuous character, his outspoken and at times vicious vendettas against the likes of Robert Ross, Frank Harris and other members of Wilde’s circle, his penchant for libel court actions (including one against Winston Churchill in 1923 for which he spent six months in prison), and the anti-Semitic periodicals to which he contributed and edited. All of these character traits are evidenced in the collection. His manuscript annotations in the margins of many of his books, press cuttings and his own annotated volumes of Plain English show that his lively and forthright character remained with him throughout his life. The most striking feature of the Douglas collection, however, is the large number of presentation copies from his library, sent to him by contemporary poets expressing their admiration of his work and asking his opinion of their own efforts. They stand as testimony to the respect which his peers held for his skills as a poet during his lifetime, and what a tragedy it is that his talent has been somewhat overshadowed by his youthful involvement with Wilde. Cataloguing and access The provenance of most of the items within the collection is traceable, largely through manuscript ownership inscriptions and bookplates. Many of the books in the collection are the volumes on which Stuart Mason, Wilde’s bibliographer, has based his descriptions.16 The collection is fully catalogued and can be accessed on the British Library’s integrated catalogue at shelfmark prefix: Eccles. Volumes must be consulted in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room. A few of the items have been restricted for conservation reasons: in these cases an alternative copy from the British Library’s collections is usually available. Manuscripts and letters in the Eccles Collection The Eccles Bequest of manuscripts (Additional MSS. 81619-81884) contains the correspondence of Oscar Wilde, his friends, associates and other notable figures, including Lord Alfred Douglas, and complements the existing holdings of Wilde’s manuscripts in the British Library’s Manuscript Collections, Add. 37943-37948 and 50141A.B., presented by his literary executor Robert Ross.

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John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Harlow, 1989), p. 685. Stuart Mason, A Bibliography of the Poems of Oscar Wilde (London, 1907), Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (Edinburgh, 1908; 2nd edn Edinburgh, 1914).

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Fig. 5. The Yellow Book (1897). Eccles 1085.

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Conclusion The collection’s richness in primary sources offers routes for understanding the cultural, social and political lives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while its broad scope and the array of genres it covers make the material relevant to a myriad of different subjects, including English literature, cultural studies, drama, sociology, art history, design and numerous others. The universal and lasting appeal of Wilde’s works, against the backdrop of the art nouveau and aesthetic movements of the 1890s, builds a fascinating picture of the time in which Wilde lived, and the huge impact he made on those around him. His fallibility and knack for self-publicity make his personal life as interesting and relevant to modern readers and researchers as his literary output. This is all perfectly captured in the Eccles collection, thus allowing new generations to continue to appreciate the legacy of Oscar Wilde.

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