Autograph letter signed : place not specified, to "Dearest Bosie" [Lord Alfred Douglas], [1892 Nov.].
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Record ID:
282142
Accession number:
MA 7258.11
Date:
[1892 Nov.].
Credit:
Gift of Lucia Moreira Salles, 2008.
Description:
1 item (4 p.), bound ; 17.4 cm
Notes:
The earliest surviving letter from Wilde to Douglas.
The letter is undated; a probable date of writing of November 1892 is given for this letter in "The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde," edited by Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Fourth Estate Ltd, 2000, p. 538-539.
Written on stationery printed with "AC" for the Albemarle Club.
Summary:
Hoping he likes the card-case Wilde has sent as a gift; saying he is off to Paris and asking if Douglas is going to the Scilly Isles; saying "I should awfully like to go away with you somewhere where it is hot and coloured;" mentioning his meetings with [Herbert Beerbohm] Tree; at the top of the first page Wilde has written "Love to Enscombe" [Douglas's friend with whom he shared rooms at Oxford].
Provenance:
Gift of Lucia Moreira Salles in 2008; from the collection of Francis, 11th Marquess of Queensberry; sold at auction in London in 1951; offered by Maggs, 1953; location unknown from 1953 until its acquisition by Walter and Lucia Moreira Salles (year of acquisition unknown).
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