Play sold for Wilde price at auction

A RARE FIRST edition copy of Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest has sold for just over €263,000 at a New York auction.

The sale established a world record price at auction for a book by Oscar Wilde and is the second highest price ever paid at auction for a book by an Irish writer. The most expensive was a first edition of Ulysses by James Joyce.

Before the auction on Friday night, Sotheby’s had estimated the book’s value at between US$80,000 and US$120,000. But the hammer came down at US$362,500 (€263,650) – over three times the highest estimate.

The auctioneers named the buyer as James Cummins Bookseller of Madison Avenue, Manhattan.

Sotheby’s said the book had once been owned by Robert Ross, “a profoundly important figure in Wilde’s personal and professional life – first as a lover, then as a close friend, ardent supporter and finally literary executor”.

Robert (Robbie) Ross was a wealthy Canadian – the son of an Irish emigrant from Co Antrim who became a railway magnate – who moved to England to study at Oxford. As a young man he met Wilde, and in 1888 the two men had a brief affair. Although the relationship was short-lived, they remained lifelong friends.

Ross was Wilde’s most loyal friend and stood by him throughout the disgrace of his trial, imprisonment and subsequent exile to France.

In 1895, Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” – at a time when homosexual acts were outlawed — and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. The same year, the play – the full title of which is, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People – was first performed in London on St Valentine’s Day, 1895.