Books

München [Munich]: Drei Masken Verlages, 1923. Limited Edition. Very good. SIGNED. 57pp. Quarto [28 cm] Parchment vellum boards, with a hubbed spine, gilt spine title, and single gilt ruled borders on the spine and boards. Top edge gilt. Patterned endpapers. Bound by Hübel & Denck in Leipzig. The front board is wavy. There is a previous owner's decorative bookplate on the front pastedown. The text is in English. Ritter C a 29. Woodcuts by Frans Masereel. This is one of the copies which have been numbered with Roman Numerals. Number XLVII of LXX (the copies numbered in Roman numerals forming part of an overall edition of 340 copies). Signed by Frans Masereel on the limitation page. Masereel has additionally signed the seven full-page woodcut illustrations within.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol (/rɛdɪŋ dʒeɪl/) on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. During his imprisonment, he witnessed the events leading up to the hanging of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, for the murder of his wife; these events inspired the poem.