De Profundis.

London: Methuen and Co.,, 1905. Hearts are made to be broken First edition, limited issue, one of 200 copies on handmade paper, of the author's dramatic prison letter. This was the only literary work Wilde produced during his time in Reading Gaol (1895-97), eventually published five years after his death by his literary executor Robert Ross. Wilde began writing what became De Profundis in the final months of his imprisonment, from December 1896 till March 1897. The resulting manuscript developed from simply a letter into "a more purely autobiographical and meditative document, oriented to the future as much as to the past, in which Wilde laid out the preconditions and terms on which he intended to face the world once again" (Frankel, p. 68). Though Wilde instructed Ross to send the twenty handwritten sheets to Lord Alfred Douglas, after first having two typewritten duplicates made, Ross instead retained it, having realised its literary value. Ross published this first edition of the letter with Methuen in 1905, as "a heavily redacted version of the manuscript to great acclaim, with the title De Profundis (meaning 'From the Depths', from Psalm 130), having first carefully removed all references to Douglas or his family as well as all traces of the document's origins as a letter. Tellingly, when Douglas reviewed this 1905 publication for the Motorist and Traveler, he was unable to recognise the work's origins in a letter to himself" (ibid., p. 69). The manuscript was eventually deposited in the British Library in 1909, on condition that access was restricted for fifty years. Octavo. Original white cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, design of a bird flying through prison bars and a night sky by Charles Ricketts in gilt on front cover, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Armorial bookplate to front pastedown of a branch of the Edinburgh Webster family. Spine slightly toned, mild fingersoiling to cloth, contents generally bright and clean. A very good copy. Mason 389. Nicholas Frankel, Oscar Wilde. The Unrepentant Years. 2017.