“OH! UNKIND LOVE! WHY HAVE YOU WOUNDED ME SO BITTERLY?”
DOUGLAS, Alfred. Sonnets. London: Rich and Cowan, 1935. Octavo, original beige paper boards, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, uncut and unopened, original watered silk slipcase. $1200.
Signed limited edition, number 23 of only 50 copies signed by Alfred Douglas, with frontispiece facsimile of “The Wastes of Time.”
Douglas is best known today as Oscar Wilde's companion and the source of his spectacular downfall, but he was himself a poet of some standing, praised by many of the leading critics of the early 20th-century for his work in the medium of the Petrarchan sonnet. Sonnets was first published in 1909: Douglas continued to revise the work, adding new material to later editions.
Light restoration to joints of slipcase, book fine. A beautiful copy.