Looking Ahead to 2021
As 2020 draws to a close, most of us are breathing a sigh of relief. It’s been a testing year, in ways we probably never imagined.
Whilst we know that life will not magically return to normal as the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve, here are some happy things we can look forward to in 2021:
The Book Collector will be announcing the winner of our Fantasy Banquet for Bibliophiles competition on 14th February 2021. You still have until 22 January 2021 to enter, so get writing! Top prize is £500 and publication in The Book Collector’s print issue.
We’ve had a very energetic response and are thoroughly enjoying reading through all the entries received so far. But it’s still anyone’s to win!
So, pull on your creative boots and get writing. You can find full details about the competition here >
Bonhams is hosting a major exhibition to mark the 120th Anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s death. The exhibition will feature manuscripts, letters, first editions, association copies and ephemera from the Jeremy Mason Collection. It will run from 15 – 23 February 2021. Mason is a noted Wilde collector, bibliophile and former dealer in Oriental antiques. He’s been collecting Wilde memorabilia for the last 55 years. His extensive collection of 500 books, files and boxes has been distilled to showcase the many facets of Wilde’s remarkable life and will present a fascinating and rare highlights, including:
- Portrait of Oscar Wilde by the famous New York photographer Sarony taken in 1882. Wilde’s flamboyant attire, went viral: his velvet coat, knee-breeches, silk stockings, and patent leather shoes had one Midwest journalist wondering whether the fashionable young men of Milwaukee would “fear that their calves are wanting in symmetry”.
- Autograph letter signed to Ada Leverson, [February 1895]. Written to thank the critic Leverson – always known to Wilde as ‘The Sphinx’ – for her glowing review of the first night of The Importance of Being Earnest. “Dear Sphinx, You are more than all criticisms. I have merely to thank you again and again for your desire to sound in my honour a daffodil-shaped horn… Bosie sends sweet words, and so does our Scotch friend Ross.” By April Wilde was in prison awaiting trial.
- The bill for flowers at Oscar Wilde’s funeral, made out to Robert Ross, amounting to 77 francs, submitted by Maison Helbig of 10 Boulevard Malesherbes, Paris, 2 December 1900.
- Two delightful unpublished letters to a child, Beatrice Faudel-Phillips, in which Wilde warns that ‘People who break their engagements …eventually become so stout, that their waistcoats don’t fit them, and the Doctors don’t allow them to eat whipped cream, ices, or indeed sweet things of any description’ and describes himself as a “wall flower” who does not dance any more.
Bonhams Head of Fine Books and Manuscripts Matthew Haley said: “It’s a great privilege to be hosting this wonderfully exciting and rich collection. In the 120 years since his death, Wilde’s reputation has swung from moral degenerate to gay icon, but public interest in this complicated and talented man has never dimmed. This promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime show and the exhibition will be accompanied by a special catalogue, creating a permanent record of Jeremy Mason’s extraordinary collection.”
Pioneering female fairytale author Countess d’Aulnoy (1650 – 1705) is coming back into print. The Island of Happiness will include the first English translation of The Tale of Mira, a 300 year-old story by the French writer.
Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, known as Madame or Countess d’Aulnoy, invented the term “conte de fée” or fairytale, when she published her major collection of them in 1697-98.
Princeton University Press will release a new collection of Countess d’Aulnoy’s work titled The Island of Happiness, it will feature illustrations and an essay by artist Natalie Frank who calls it a “feminist ghost story for the ages”.
The Tale of Mira warns of the dangers of unrequited love, as the beautiful Mira makes scores of men fall desperately in love with her, only for them to die due to her pride and indifference. But then she falls for a man who is indifferent to her...
D’Aulnoy’s own life reads like fiction too. In an introduction to the book, translator Jack Zipes chronicles her story: married at the age of 13 to a notorious gambler 30 years older than her, she attempted to have him killed without success, spent a brief period in prison and then travelled around Spain and England for more than a decade, a period during which she is believed to have worked as a French spy. In 1690, she returned to Paris, where she opened a salon and became France’s foremost fairytale author before her death in 1705. Zipes goes on to describe her as “more notable” than Perrault.
“D’Aulnoy’s tales,” Zipes says, “placed women in greater control of their destinies than in fairytales by men. It is obvious that the narrative strategies of her tales… were meant to expose decadent practices and behaviour among the people of her class, particularly those who degraded independent women.”
Gloria Steinem has praised the forthcoming collection: “In giving us back the women heroines and images and lives that were once the heart and soul of the oldest stories, Natalie Frank is giving back to female readers the right to honour and tell our own stories”.
The 240 page collection will be released by Princeton University Press on 16 March 2021 (£34.00 / $39.95, ISBN: 9780691180243) Full details here >
Finally, of course, we are all keeping our fingers crossed that Firsts London 2021 will take placed as planned, at its new venue in the Saatchi Gallery from 20th - 23rd May. We hope to see you all there, if not before!
For now, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from The Book Collector.