AN IDEAL HUSBAND. BY THE AUTHOR OF LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN

London: Leonard Smithers and Co, 1899. FIRST EDITION. ONE OF 1,000 COPIES. 215 x 155 mm. (8 3/8 x 6"). 8 p.l., 213, [1] pp.
Original lavender cloth decorated with gilt flourishes, smooth spine with gilt lettering, edges untrimmed and ENTIRELY UNOPENED. Mason 385. ◆Spine slightly sunned (as virtually always), but no wear to joints or hinges and, in all, A REMARKABLY WELL-PRESERVED, OBVIOUSLY UNREAD COPY (because unopened), and without the soiling this edition is almost always found with.

This is an exceptionally fine copy of Wilde's second hit play, successful like his other witty comedies, but with at least slightly more serious social and political content. Opening at the Haymarket Theatre in 1895 and continuing for 124 performances, it features as the title character a prominent politician in danger of losing his reputation because of a potentially damaging letter that the play's villain threatens to expose if the husband refuses to support the former's corrupt political agenda. The play moves its characters toward a more ideal moral standard as they struggle with dishonesty, hypocrisy, double standards, materialism, and corruption of social and political life. But none of this weighs down Wilde's witty banter, as the play suggests, after all, that even when there is a pretense of the embrace of moral probity, nobody is ever that good or is even expected to be. The work is dedicated to the Irish-American writer Frank Harris, who is said to have given Wilde the idea to use insider trading (which related to Disraeli's financial machinations) as part of the plot here. Covering the play for the "Saturday Review," George Bernard Shaw declared Wilde (1854-1900) "our only thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theatre." On nearly all copies of this edition, the publisher's binding is now encountered in unappetizing condition; finding our unopened copy--with virtually none of the soiling almost always seen with the four Wilde plays bound in this lavender cloth--is piece of very good fortune..