Books

1894. London: Elkin Matthews and John Lane, 1894. Small 4to, [22] ff., unpaginated, illustrated throughout by Ricketts. Washed and cleaned to remove all the inevitable spotting always found, and rebound in stiff vellum retaining the elaborate gilt covers designed by Ricketts; printed on Arnold unbleached hand-made paper with green printed initials and russet headlines and full-page illustrations. § First edition, one of 200 copies on small paper. One of the very few indisputably great (and weird) illustrated books of the 1890s. “In 1894 Ricketts produced a masterpiece for Matthews and Lane with The Sphinx. Ricketts was evidently given a free hand not merely to illustrate the book but to design it from cover to cover. The book is brilliantly successful. The use of brick red for the illustrations and the bright green for the decorative initials and catchwords and the black printed text in large and small capitals throughout, provides an ideal setting for the artificiality of…

The Sphinx is a one-act play written by Oscar Wilde. It's a dramatic monologue by a woman who laments the absence of her lover, who has died. The richness of the symbolic imagery intertwines themes of love with the mystery of the Sphinx.