Morley Oscar Wilde

Morley, Sheridan: Oscar Wilde, New York, New York, U.S.A. Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1976
ISBN: 0030175860 Near Fine Jacket Design By Behram Kapadia

Hard cover with bright blue cloth-covered boards and spine, gold printing on spine, is in NEAR FINE condition. Very light rubbing to lower spine end. Brodart-wrapped DJ, NOT price-clipped, is VERY GOOD+. Light rubbing to spine ends and folded flap corners. With a style and wit that equal his subject, Sheridan Morley deftly re-creates the life and times of England's pre-eminent dandy-aesthete. From his beginnings as the child of middle-class (if somewhat eccentric) Irish parents, through his spectacular successes as playwright and wag and his equally spectacular and scandalous antics, to his downfall and imprisonment, "Oscar Wilde" is high drama. Always a figure of fascination, Wilde emerges in Sheridan Morley's sensitive treatment as more than the brilliant and colorful victim of late-Victorian sexual codes, for he was in reality a child who refused to grow up and, like all children, he failed to recognize the moment when the grown-ups would cease to laugh. When Wilde reached the witness box for the last time, he was like a man in the wrong suit at the wrong party -- only then realizing that he had not the social strength to carry off his impudent rebellion. In "Oscar Wilde," Sheridan Morley narrates the full tale, a tale that is at once magnificent and ignominious, wry and sad. And, because to understand what happened to Wilde one must understand the world in which he lived, the author vividly delineates that world as well. By no means the cloistered, poetic hothouse in which earlier biographers were keen to place Wilde, it was instead the commercial theater and publishing world of London in the 1880s and 1890s. It was a world and a time strangely at odds with itself: strait-laced and puritanical, decadent and debauched. Within this world, Wilde moved, riding the crest of adulation and success. A shrewd self-publicist with an eye for headlines, he had the journalist's sense of occasion. He left only one real mystery behind him: how could anyone with so well-developed a sense of his own image have failed to see the trap he was setting for himself? In this exciting reappraisal of Wilde, his work, his life, his era, Sheridan Morley seeks to unravel this enigma that has fascinated and puzzled so many for so long. First Edition/First Printing Stated Very Good+ Hard Cover 7" Wide x 10" Tall Blue Cloth-Covered Boards

[SW: WILDE OSCAR 1854 1900 LITERARYBIOGRAPHY MOVIE, THEATRE, PLAY CELEBRITY LITERARY]

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Anonymous: "Short Story" (Premier of Robert Morley's First Stage-play) at The Queen's Theatre, London - Theatre Programme, London The Queen's Theatre 1935
Very Good

Unpaginated, but 16pp inc full-page b+w portraits of Sybil Thorndyke, Marie Tempest. Ursula Jeans and A. E. Mathews. - Souvenir program for The Queen's Theatre's 1935 premier (I believe) of Robert Morley's first stageplay (of the six he wrote) "Short Story". Starring in this "comedy in three acts" were: Marie Tempest (English singer and actress known as the "queen of her profession" and in 1934, she was instrumental in the founding of the actors union Actors' Equity, when she hosted a dinner at the Savoy for eighty-five leading entertainers.). <P>Also: Margaret Rutherford (character actress who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" as the lovely but totally mad medium, and in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"); a young (27 years old) Rex Harrison (Academy Award- and Tony Award-winning English theatre and film actor, perhaps most remembered in "My Fair Lady" as Professor Henry Higgins); Sybil Thorndike (who when only 21 was offered her first professional contract:, a tour of the USA "with the actor-manager Ben Greet's company. She made her first stage appearance in Greet's 1904 production of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor". She went on to tour the U.S. in Shakespearean repertory for four years, playing some 112 roles"). <P> Also A. E. Matthews (player of innumerable character roles on the stage and in film for eight decades, including the wartime tour of "The First Mrs. Fraser", with Tempest. From World War II until his death he was renowned as one of British cinema's most famous crotchety, and sometimes rascally, old men.), The play was directed by Tyrone Guthrie (a Tony Award-winning, Anglo-Irish theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, at his family's home, Annaghmakerrig, in County Monaghan, Ireland"). <P> Morley attended "RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) and made his West End stage debut in 1929 in "Treasure Island" at the Strand Theatre. He later (1936) played the title role of "Oscar Wilde" at the Gate Theatre Studio, a role he reprised for his Broadway debut in 1938 (Fulton Theater) and 20 years later on the big screen (for which he received an Oscar nomination). <P> <B>PROVENANCE:</B> this item comes from the collection of H. W. Roxburgh of Liverpool, in whose extensive collection of theatrical ephemera this item was contained. It was purchased at Fellows and Sons Auction, Birmingham (UK) in Aug, 2007. <P>The front cover (silver gilt with black and red titles) and textblock are bright and clean. First Edition No Jacket Pamphlet 5.5 x 8.5"

[SW: Short Story, Robert Morley, Marie Tempest, Margaret Rutherford, Rex Harrison, Sybil Thorndike, Tyrone Guthrie, Theater, Theatre, Theatre Programme, Theater Program, Souvenir Program, Souvenir Programme, Ephemera Entertainment Theatre Souvenir Program Souvenir Programme Theatre Programme Theater Program Playbill Coward, Noel]

Details

Morley Sheridan. Oscar Wilde. London Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1976
Very Good +

A very nice copy D/W is un-clipped and covered with a protective wrapper. Decorative end papers. 160pp.A stimulating reappraisal of Wilde, his work, his life and his times, beautifully illustrated with black-and-white and colour illustrations, the biographer Sheridan Morley, seeks to unravel the enigma that has fascinated so many for so long. 1st EDITION. Very Good + Hard Cover 7"X10"TALL

[SW: OSCAR WILDE/NON-FICTION/IRISH INTEREST/NON-FICTION/BIOGRAPHY]

Details

Morley, Margaret: ROBERT MORLEY: LARGER THAN LIFE, Coronet London1980 ISBN: 340250860

PB Slight rubs on cover, text yellowing, else very good copy with photos An actor's story of delicate boyhood in Folkestone, miserable imprisonment at public school and more 208pp Biography Oscar Wilde

[SW: Oscar Wilde]

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