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Preface to Oscar Wilde’s Selected
Poems
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Italicised
commentary by |
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This volume was first published by Methuen & Co as no 77 in their
‘Shilling Library on |
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It
is thought that a selection from Oscar Wilde’s early verses may be of
interest to a large public at present familiar only with the always popular Ballad of Reading Gaol, also included
in this volume. The poems were first
collected by their author when he was twenty-six years old, and though never,
until recently, well received by the critics, have survived the test of NINE
editions. Readers will be able to make
for themselves the obvious and striking contrast between these first and last
phases of Oscar Wilde’s literary activity.
The intervening period was devoted almost entirely to dramas, prose,
fiction, essays, and criticism. |
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ROBERT
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Reform
Club, |
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The reference to nine editions is explained in a note on p.iv: |
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Wilde’s
poems were first published in volume form in 1881, and were reprinted four
times before the end of 1882. A new
edition with additional poems, including Ravenna, The Sphinx, and The Ballad
of Reading Gaol, was first published (limited issue on hand made paper and
Japanese vellum) by Methuen & Co in March 1908. A further edition (making the seventh) with
some omissions from the edition of 1908, but including two new poems, was
published in September 1909. Eighth
edition, November 1909. Ninth edition,
December 1909. Tenth edition December
1910. Eleventh edition, December 1911. |
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The editions referred to run parallel to the ‘Shilling Library’
edition, the publishing history of which is also given: |
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First
published August 17th 1911; second edition August 1911; third
edition September 1911; fourth edition October 1911; fifth edition March
1912; sixth edition December 1912; seventh edition September 1913; eighth
edition 1914. |
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The ‘Shilling Library’ edition is notable for containing two versions
of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. Ross
explains this in a note on p.ix: |
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At
the end of the complete text will be found a shorter version based on the
original draft of the poem. This is
included for the benefit of reciters and their audiences who have found the
entire poem too long for declamation.
I have tried to obviate a difficulty, without officiously exercising
the ungrateful prerogatives of a literary executor, by falling back on a text
which represents the author’s first scheme for a poem – never intended of
course for recitation. |
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Note that Ross does not say outright that this text is actually that
of Wilde’s ‘first scheme’. The
ambiguity is reinforced by a further note on p.61: ‘A version based on the
original draft of the poem’. W.B.
Yeats’ reduced version of The Ballad for the |
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The other poems that Ross selected for
this edition are ‘Ave Imperatrix’, ‘To My Wife (with a copy of my poems)’,
‘Magdalen Walks’, ‘Theocritus – a villanelle’, ‘Greece’, ‘Portia (to Ellen
Terry)’, ‘Fabien dei Franchi (to Henry Irving)’, ‘Phèdre (to Sarah Bernhardt)’,
‘On hearing the Dies Iræ sung in the Sistine Chapel’, ‘Ave Maria Gratia Plena’,
‘Libertatis Sacra Fames’, ‘Roses and Rue’, ‘From “The Garden of Eros”’, ‘The
Harlot’s House’, ‘From “The Burden of Itys”’, ‘Flower of Love’. |
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The volume was
printed by The Northumberland Press, |
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The above is taken
from the copy in my collection. |
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DCR
September 2010 |
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