The Queenslander - Saturday, June 8, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
Literary Chitchat.
"Poetry of the Victorian Era."
A sale of Mr. Oscar Wilde's effects took place on the 24th April, at his house in Tite-street, Chelsea, under a sheriff's order. Most of the people, excepting in particular a knot of artists, who attended the sale were brokers (says a London paper). The largest section of the strangely-mixed household gods[sic] was certainly the books, and they ranged over a wide area of authors and subjects, poetry, belles lettres, and French fiction being most prominent. Parcels of French novels followed each other, and three volumes of newspaper cuttings preceded by a little space thirteen of Parnell Commission evidence and speeches. The newspaper cuttings, referring, one supposed, to Oscar Wilde as author and playwright, went for 18s., while the more bulky Parnell Commission records only produced 8s. No rigid method of classification seemed to have been observed in the arrangement of the books, and when the bundles were large only a few of the volumes were mentioned. Thus buyers were as often as not in the position of boys dipping into a lucky bag; only the gentleman who for £2 got Tennnyson's poems of 1858, with Carlyle's autograph, and nine and twenty other books, must have come out safely enough. Daniel O'Connell's autograph on a copy of "Horae Hellenica" made it marketable at once, and a parcel of manuscripts readily ran up to £5 15s. As an interesting commentary on the bearing of modern appliances towards manuscripts, it should be mentioned that a good many of these were type-written. The most keenly-competed-for lot of absolute Oscar Wilde works contained "The Happy Prince," "The Sphinx," and "Lady Windermere's Fan," and realised £8 5s.; while "Dorian Grey" passed to a buyer for three guineas.
A sale of Mr. Oscar Wilde's effects took place on the 24th April, at his house in Tite-street, Chelsea, under a sheriff's order. Most of the people, excepting in particular a knot of artists, who attended the sale were brokers (says a London paper). The largest section of the strangely-mixed household gods[sic] was certainly the books, and they ranged over a wide area of authors and subjects, poetry, belles lettres, and French fiction being most prominent. Parcels of French novels followed each other, and three volumes of newspaper cuttings preceded by a little space thirteen of Parnell Commission evidence and speeches. The newspaper cuttings, referring, one supposed, to Oscar Wilde as author and playwright, went for 13s, while the more bulky Parnell Commission records only produced 8s. No rigid method of classification seemed to have been observed in the arrangement of the books, and when the bundles were large only a few of the volumes were mentioned. Thus buyers were as often as not in the position of boys dipping into a lucky bag; only the gentleman who for £2 got Tennnyson's poems of 1858, with Carlyle's autograph, and nine and twenty other books, must have come out safely enough. Daniel O'Connell's autograph on a copy of "Horae Hellenicae" made it marketable at once, and a parcel of manuscripts readily ran up to £5 15s. As an interesting commentary on the bearing of modern appliances towards manuscripts, it should be mentioned that a good many of these were type-written. The most keenly-competed-for lot of absolute Oscar Wilde works contained "The Happy Prince," "The Sphinx," and "Lady Windermere's Fan," and realised £8 5s.; while "Dorian Grey" passed to a buyer for three guineas.
A sale of Mr Oscar Wilde's effects took place on the 24th April, at his house in Tite-street, Chelsea, under a sheriff's order. Most of the people, excepting in particular a knot of artists, who attended the sale were brokers (says a London paper). The largest section of the strangely mixed household gods was certainly the books, and they ranged over a wide area of authors and subjects, poetry, belles lettres, and French fiction being most prominent. Parcels of French novels followed each other, and three volumes of newspaper cuttings preceded by a little space 13 volumes of Parnell Commission evidence and speeches. The newspaper cuttings, referring, one supposed, to Oscar Wilde as author and playwright, went for 13s, while the more bulky Parnell Commission records only produced 8s. No rigid method of classification seemed to have been observed in the arrangement of the books, and when the bundles were large only a few of the volumes were mentioned. Thus buyers were as often as not in the position of boys dipping into a lucky bag; only the gentleman who for £2 got Tennyson's poems of 1858, with Carlyle's autograph, and nine and twenty other books, must have come out safely enough. Daniel O'Connell's autograph on a copy of "Horæ Hellenicæ" made it marketable at once, and a parcel of manuscripts readily ran up to £5 15s. As an interesting commentary on the bearing of modern appliances towards manuscripts, it should be mentioned that a good many of those were type-written. The most keenly competed-for lot of absolute Oscar Wilde works contained "The Happy Prince," "The Sphinx," and "Lady Windermere's Fan," and realised £8 5s; while "Dorian Grey" passed to a buyer for three guineas.