Modern Literature • Art Deco Illustration • American Design

Wilde • Salome • 1927 • New York, E.P. Dutton

First edition illustrated by John Vassos, in original dust jacket

Oscar Wilde's Salome, a work already steeped in fin-de-siècle decadence and theatrical symbolism, undergoes a striking transformation in this 1927 American edition illustrated by John Vassos. Where earlier visual interpretations—most notably those associated with Aubrey Beardsley—lean toward the ornamental and decadent, Vassos reimagines the drama through the lens of early modern design, translating Wilde's charged narrative into a language of geometry, shadow, and stylized form.

This edition marks the beginning of Vassos's important sequence of illustrated books, positioning Salome not only as a literary work but as a design object. His "inventions," as they are termed on the title page, are not mere illustrations but re-stagings: figures reduced to silhouette, space constructed through rhythm and contrast, and the drama distilled into a series of striking visual compositions that anticipate the aesthetics of industrial design and American Art Deco.

Physical Description

[10], 57 pp. Illustrated by John Vassos. Small 4to. Original black boards lettered in gilt, with pictorial Art Deco dust jacket.

Illustration

Vassos's plates are among the earliest fully realized Art Deco interpretations of Wilde's text. The compositions are deliberately theatrical, employing abstraction and stylization rather than narrative detail, and situating the work within a broader shift from illustration toward modern visual culture. This edition is widely regarded as the starting point of Vassos's illustrated oeuvre and remains the most accessible entry into his work.

Condition

Jacket spine sunned, edges chipped and creased, with soil and staining; rear panel with a 4 × 7 cm loss at lower edge; price-clipped. Spine of volume sunned, extremities softened; bookplate and booksellers' stickers present; gentle toning throughout. A very good copy in a good dust jacket.

Copies retaining the original dust jacket are increasingly sought after, the jacket itself functioning as a key component of the book's visual identity and a primary driver of collector interest.