THE SPHINX

Description: One of Wilde’s great works and one of English literature’s great feats of book design, executed by Wilde’s friend, the artist and typographer Charles Ricketts, who was given full reign over every aspect of this book's typography, binding and illustration. The text features ten of Rickett’s risque wood-engraved illustrations, nine of them full-page. The volume is richly bound in full vellum with Ricketts' sinuous decorations gilt-stamped on the covers, front and rear. This is a very good copy, entirely unfoxed, though the slender vellum boards have bowed just enough to separate slightly from the inner pastedown edges. There are two discreet bookplates on the front pastedown, one of which has left a tiny shadow on the front free endpaper oppositie. Otherwise a uniquely fresh copy presented here in a burgundy quarter-leather cloth solander with an internal cloth slipcase lined in marbled paper.