Newdigate Prize Poem. Ravenna.: Recited in the Theatre, Oxford, June 26, 1878.

Oxford: Thos. Shrimpton and Son,, 1878. Attractively bound copy of Wilde's first independent publication First edition of Wilde's first independent publication, an attractively bound copy preserving the original wrappers, and with the bookplate to the front pastedown of the eccentric sportsman and artist William Eden (1849-1915), father of future Prime Minister Anthony Eden, and who, like Wilde, had a dispute with the artist James McNeill Whistler. The inspiration for Wilde's prize-winning poem came on a "vacation ramble" to Italy in 1877 with the precentor and junior dean of Trinity College, Dublin, William Mahaffy. According to the review published the next day in The Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduate's Journal Wilde's recitation of it at Oxford was "listened to with rapt attention and frequently applauded" (Ellman, p. 94). Eden excelled at a range of sports from boxing and horse riding to shooting, "the epitome of the sporting squire" (ODNB), a member of several clubs and well known in London society. So too was he a keen amateur artist and aesthete, building a fine collection of paintings, and was a member of the aristocratic group The Souls. The contrast between the sportsman and the aesthete has been noted: "There was little that was harmonious in his nature, and the aesthetic side warred with and exacerbated, rather than complemented, his athleticism, making him a bored sportsman and a militant aesthete. As he grew older, the world's failure to correspond to his ideals drove him to furious rages and the debased taste of humanity confirmed his atheism - for how could a God have made such a botch of things?" (ibid). His dispute with Whistler was occasioned when Eden commissioned a portrait of his wife, which Whistler executed, but then kept the cheque without handing over the painting, leading to a legal case which resulted in Whistler's book The Baronet and the Butterfly (1899). Wilde too had a lengthy rivalry with Whistler, out of the courts, but with very public sparring. Octavo, 16 pp. (176 x 119 mm). Early 20th-century pink straight-grain morocco for Hatchards of Piccadilly, spine lettered in gilt, pink cloth sides, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, pink silk page marker; bulked with 20 binder's blanks. With the original green printed wrappers bound in. Spine lightly sunned, very light rubbing at extremities, short split at foot of front wrapper; an excellent copy. Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (1987); Mason 301.