John (1885/1917) Gray Sold at Auction Prices

GRAY, John (1866-1934). Silverpoints . London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893. 12° (211 x 103 mm). Original green cloth, covers with all-over gilt design by Charles Ricketts, uncut (extremities a little worn, ink spots to covers and

GRAY, John (1866-1934). Silverpoints. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893. 12° (211 x 103 mm). Original green cloth, covers with all-over gilt design by Charles Ricketts, uncut (extremities a little worn, ink spots to covers and fore-edge, browning to endpapers). ASSOCIATION COPY, front blank with ownership signature of S. H. Tinklar, the author's sister. FIRST EDITION. NUMBER 192 OF 250 COPIES. The imitations of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Rimbaud in Gray's slim volume of verse show his familiarity with the Parisian avant-garde. Gray had also met Oscar Wilde in 1889. He copied the older man's dandyish appearance and signed himself 'Dorian' in letters to him. In Richard Ellmann's view, Wilde's naming his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was a form of courtship. Wilde thought Gray's verse 'a perfect mode of expression', and paid for the publishing of Silverpoints, his first book (Ellmann, pp. 290 and 368).