An Unnumbered Hors Commerce Presentation Copy in Art Deco Style Binding

WILDE, Oscar. La Ballade de la Geôle de Reading. Paris: Javal et Bourdeaux, 1927.

A rare unnumbered hors commerce presentation copy of the 1927 Javal et Bourdeaux edition of Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol, printed on Japon Impérial, illustrated with fifteen colour copper engravings after Jean-Georges Cornélius, and preserved in a contemporary Art Deco-style binding with the original wrappers bound in.

This is not one of the ordinary numbered copies in the limitation of 225 copies on papier impérial du Japon. It is marked “N° H.C.” and accompanied by a presentation slip explaining that this copy is “hors-commerce, privately printed, out of series, not for sale.” That distinction gives the volume a more intimate and privileged place within the edition: not merely a limited copy, but a presentation copy outside the commercial sequence.

Edition & Physical Description

Large quarto, approximately 294 × 236 mm.

26, XLV pages, followed by one leaf. Preface by Henry D. Davray. Illustrated after Jean-Georges Cornélius with fifteen copper engravings printed in colour by Ch. Thévenin, comprising nine full-page plates and six vignettes.

Limited to 225 copies on papier impérial du Japon. This copy is an unnumbered hors commerce presentation copy, marked “N° H.C.” Original printed wrappers bound in.

The justification states that Cornélius’s compositions were engraved by Thévenin on three copper plates, without a black plate, giving the illustrations their distinctive tonal severity and symbolic atmosphere.

Wilde’s Prison Poem

Wilde wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol after his release from prison in May 1897, while living in exile in France.

It is the most stripped and devastating work of his late life. Gone is the glittering social brilliance of the comedies, the cultivated paradox, the decorative theatricality. In its place is a poem of punishment, shame, execution, dehumanization, and the moral brutality of the prison system.

The poem was born from Wilde’s imprisonment at H.M. Prison Reading after his 1895 conviction for “gross indecency” and sentence to two years’ hard labour. Its famous prison identity, C.33, becomes more than a biographical marker. It becomes a symbolic signature of the fall from public genius to condemned body, from Oscar Wilde to inmate.

That is why the present edition is especially powerful visually. The C.33 prison-door motif appears on the wrappers, title page, H.C. limitation page, and endpapers, turning the physical book itself into a meditation on confinement.

Cornélius and the Symbolist Wilde

The illustrations by Jean-Georges Cornélius give the poem a severe, almost liturgical visual language.

Cornélius trained in the artistic circles of Gustave Moreau and Luc-Olivier Merson and brought to his work a mixture of Symbolist modernity, decorative medievalism, and spiritual intensity. His designs are not merely decorative accompaniments to Wilde’s text. They interpret the poem as a drama of guilt, sacrifice, and inner desolation.

The fifteen colour copper engravings, printed by Ch. Thévenin, have a sombre theatricality entirely suited to Reading Gaol. The plates and vignettes give the book a prison-like rhythm: enclosed, ritualized, and haunted.

Cornélius also illustrated Wilde’s De Profundis, along with works such as La Chanson de Roland and Baudelaire’s Les Paradis artificiels, making him an unusually fitting artist for Wilde’s late French reception.

Binding & Design

Custom contemporary Art Deco-style binding, morocco-backed with taupe suede or suede-like boards, gilt spine lettering, and gilt rule.

The original printed wrappers are bound in, including the striking C.33 prison-door design. The repeated use of the C.33 motif across the wrappers, title page, limitation page, and endpapers gives the volume unusually strong visual unity. It is not just a fine press Wilde edition, but a designed object built around the iconography of imprisonment.

The Art Deco character of the binding also places the book firmly in the world of 1920s French luxury publishing, where literary modernity, fine paper, limited issue, and severe decorative design often met.

Provenance

From the celebrated Oscar Wilde collection of Jeremy J. Mason, with his ex-libris present.

Mason was one of the most important modern private collectors of Oscar Wilde material, assembling books, manuscripts, letters, portraits, and associated Wildeana. His provenance gives the copy strong collecting significance within the modern history of Wilde collecting.

Original invoice and presentation slip included.

Condition

Very good or better.

Contemporary Art Deco-style morocco-backed suede binding sound and handsome, with light wear and minor rubbing. Original printed wrappers bound in. Internally generally clean with light age toning. Colour engravings remain strong and attractive. Jeremy J. Mason ex-libris present. Presentation slip included.

A scarce and highly desirable unnumbered hors commerce presentation copy of Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol, printed on Japon Impérial, illustrated with fifteen colour copper engravings after Jean-Georges Cornélius, custom bound in contemporary Art Deco style, and distinguished by Jeremy J. Mason provenance.