Books

First edition, large paper issue, one of 50 copies attractively printed on handmade paper with wide margins and bound in tan buckram. The trade issue consisted of 500 copies printed on smaller, machine-made paper bound in pink linen. This satirical play on English manners premiered at Haymarket Theatre on 19 April 1893 and ran until 16 August for 113 performances. Wilde's opulent production used "the market forces of luxury dressmaking to comment upon the worlds of his Haymarket patrons... Audiences in the stalls and boxes continued to be both flattered and vexed by the antics of their on-stage doubles, while viewers in the upper galleries enjoyed the additional spectacle of fashionable Society catching its likeness in Wilde's cunningly set mirrors" (Kaplan, p. 252). The first show met with applause for the actors and boos for the playwright, causing Wilde to announce from behind a curtain, "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Mr. Oscar Wilde is not in the house" (Ellmann, p. 381). Small quarto. Original tan buckram with gilt floral decorations by Charles Shannon, spine lettered in gilt, fore and bottom edges uncut. Spine toned, gilt bright, endpapers browned, contents fresh. A near-fine copy. Mason 365. Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, 1988; Joel Kaplan, "Wilde on the Stage", The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. by Peter Raby, 1997.

A Woman of No Importance is a play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. The play premièred on 19 April 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. It is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of dark comedy. It explores themes of English upper class society and highlights the double standards between men and women during the Victorian era.