De Profundis

Local Description

"Hearts are made to be broken."

VG in worn and faded dust jacket, spine broken. Light marks on the cover edges.

Description

Secondhand. First published in 1949.

The first complete and accurate version of the last prose work of Oscar Wilde in English. First published in 1905, De Profundis was composed of extracts from a much longer work cast in the form of a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, written on blue prison paper and taken by Oscar Wilde to Dieppe on his release from Reading Gaol in 1897. The manuscript was handed to Robert Ross who made copies of it and sent the original to the British Museum. Its subsequent history, how its publication was prevented during the lifetime of Lord Alfred Douglas, and how it finally became possible to present to an English public for the first time this complete, unexpurgated edition of Oscar Wilde's masterpiece, is told by Mr. Vyvyan Holland in his Introduction. The work itself is of outstanding literary interest and importance.