Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from William Ernest Henley, London, to Oscar Wilde, 1888 November 27 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
441085
Accession number
MA 23782
Creator
Henley, William Ernest, 1849-1903.
Display Date
London, England, 1888 November 27.
Credit line
Purchased for The Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection as the gift of the Heineman Foundation, 2022.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 17.7 x 11.3 cm
Notes
Written from 1 Merton Place, Chiswick W.
On mourning stationery.
Provenance
Purchased from Pierre Bergé & Associés, Mille nuits de rêve IV: Collection Geneviève et Jean-Paul Kahn, 10 December 2021.
Summary
Thanking him for "The Young Prince" [probably referring to The Happy Prince] and saying that he has read it "with singular pleasure"; mentioning that it reminds him "too much of the Flaubert of the Tentation," but that there are aspects of it that "leap at the heart & live in the memory"; commenting on Wilde's prose style; comparing it to Flaubert's Salammbô as well; writing "I should not have believed it possible [..] that that style could be so perfectly mirrored in English"; making other critiques; adding, in a postcript, "In these stories you have found -- or are finding -- your vocation. They are worth doing, & doing well."