A Woman of No Importance.

London: John Lane at the Sign of the Bodley Head,, 1894. Mr Oscar Wilde is not in the house First edition, one of 500 trade copies. The opening show of this satirical play on English manners met with applause for the actors and boos for the playwright, causing Wilde to announce from behind a curtain, "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Mr Oscar Wilde is not in the house" (Ellmann, p. 381). Wilde's opulent production used "the market forces of luxury dressmaking to comment upon the worlds of his Haymarket patrons... Audiences in the stalls and boxes continued to be both flattered and vexed by the antics of their on-stage doubles, while viewers in the upper galleries enjoyed the additional spectacle of fashionable Society catching its likeness in Wilde's cunningly set mirrors" (Kaplan, p. 252). The play premiered at Haymarket Theatre on 19 April 1893 and ran until 16 August for 113 performances. A further 50 large-paper copies were also issued. This copy has the bookplate of Giles Alexander Esmé Gordon (1940-2003), a successful and notoriously Wildean literary agent. "He commanded the loyalty and affection of those who fell under his spell" and once stated, "I never see the point of modesty" (ODNB). His bookplate was designed by his first wife Margaret Anna Gordon (née Eastoe, 1939-1989), the children's book illustrator who collaborated with Elisabeth Beresford on The Wombles series. It later passed into the significant theatre collection of Clive Hirschhorn (b. 1940), who spent decades as the Sunday Express's film and theatre critic and whose various histories of Hollywood include The Warner Bros. Story (1978) and The Hollywood Musical (1981). Hirschhorn's ownership inscription is pencilled on the front pastedown. Small quarto. Original pink linen with gilt floral decorations by Charles Shannon, spine lettered in gilt, top edge trimmed, other edges uncut. Housed in custom red cloth folding box. Publisher's advertisement bookplate on front pastedown and their 16-page catalogue, dated March 1894, at end, all as called for. Spine lightly bumped and faded, binding a little mottled, gilt and covers bright, foxing to edges and endpapers, free endpapers with tape offsetting from previous book protector, text clean. A very good copy. Mason 364. Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, 1988; Joel Kaplan, "Wilde on the Stage", The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. by Peter Raby, 1997.