794. In Memoriam Ton Leenhouts (1934-2026)

My enthusiasm for the work of Ricketts and Shannon was sparked by Ton Leenhouts, who passed away peacefully last Friday. We met in 1983 at a party at the Phoenix bookbindery in Amsterdam, and Ton soon invited me to catalogue his collection. It was a charming way for him to have me round to his house as often as possible. Although I was a quarter of a century younger, we bonded immediately. What followed was a 43-year love affair.

Ton was head of publicity and press relations at the Danstheater, the modern ballet company in the Netherlands that undertook many international tours. For many years, he not only designed the posters for the performances himself, but also the programme booklets; and as an innovative touch, he came up with the idea of using not stock photographs but photographs taken during the first costume run-through – photographs that were developed overnight and delivered to the printers so that the booklets were ready on the very morning of the first night. A race against the clock that, somehow, always worked out.

Ton Leenhouts, Crete, 1971

From a young age, he surrounded himself with books and works of art, and when I examined his book collection, I noticed that he collected modern literature in German, French and Dutch, but that, when it came to English literature and art, he had developed a particular fondness for the period 1860–1910. He collected book bindings, gift books and magazines from that era. However, he never confined himself to just one movement or focus. His curiosity constantly led him to explore other areas of interest, such as book illustration, which put him on the trail of The Vale Press. I wrote previously about the formation of that collection in A Modest Collection, a publication of the Private Libraries Association. Huge numbers of antiquarian catalogues arrived weekly at his house in The Hague, and he made frequent buying trips to London. 

His collection contained ever-growing rows of books by and about William Blake, D.G. Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler, Lewis Carroll, Lawrence Housman and Charles Ricketts. And although he built bookcase after bookcase himself, there was always room for furniture, prints, paintings and antiques; a pleasant balance prevailed in every room.

Ton Leenhouts, 2024

The cases were filled with literature, books on art and design, cultural history, photobooks, childen's literature, old tourists guides, publisher's memoirs, World War II, homosexuality, dictionaries. Although he was a slow reader, he easily read four books at a time. He drew connections between all those fields and, in conversation – he was a witty, erudite storyteller who was always on form – he did make use of that knowledge but never flaunted it, for his concern for others was greater than his ego.

Ton designed the layout for about twenty publications, which he had illustrated by artists and printed by commercial or private presses in very small print runs; these were published under the imprint of the Tight End Press or the Canto Pers.

Ton Leenhouts at a party, 2013

His zest for life was infectious. He was an attractive and enthusiastic entertainer, who loved cooking for groups and always managed to come up with the perfect, unexpected gift for everyone.

Personally, I learnt a great deal from him whether travelling in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, the South of France or Italy, at home together or in the company of friends or collegues; his humour, courtesy, enthusiasm, style and charm were loved by many, and to me he meant everything.

[See also blog 382. The 2018 Alphabet: T (Always)]

793. The Pianola as a Sports Training Device

In October 1916, Charles Ricketts acquired a pianola, inspired by Edmund Dulac. On 14 October 1916, he wrote to his friend the poet and playwright Gordon Bottomley about his exercises at the instrument:

The first day of its arrival I played on it for some 5 hours, & was prostrate in the evening, in a new shirt, the former one had got wet through; and with sore insteps and backs of thighs. This was due to excess, inexperience, stiffness of new gear & the resistance of the springs to the foot board which I have since had removed, with the immediate result, that the response of the instrument is now too sensitive and I have to learn it over again, practically without the use of pedals and indicator both all of which are of course necessary for fine playing. Briefly with your hands in your pocket and intelligent feet you can play intelligently and smoothly.

In his letters, Ricketts wrote about music frequently. As well as being an avid reader, he was also a great lover of music and dance, even though he did not play any musical instruments himself and his physical condition was not even suitable for cycling, let alone for the dance stage.

Edmund Dulac, 'Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon as Medieval Saints'
(The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge)

In his letter, he keeps talking non-stop about his new musical toy and all this is rounded off with a wise summary.

But I am complaining as I did before the Pianola which is a friend – a rather expensive friend, but this probably adds to friendship, affection, love!

Later he added that even his companion Charles Shannon was able to play the instrument:

[...] even Shannon sat down and compassed straightaway the finale of Carnaval with its tangle of tempos, and Shannon is confessedly non musical.

792. The Hand Mirror by Charles Shannon

Charles Shannon is primarily known as a wood-engraver, draughtsman, lithographer and painter, and there is no doubt that wood-engraving, pencil, oil paint and lithography were the media with which he achieved his finest results, but very occasionally he experimented with other techniques.

Shortly after his death, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co in London organised a retrospective exhibition of his prints, Exhibition of the Lithographs of the Late Charles Shannon, R.A., which ran from 20 January to 3 February 1938. The catalogue lists 103 lithographs, twelve chiaroscura woodcuts and two drypoints.

The catalogue does not specify the year of creation for any of the lithographs or woodcuts and the two drypoint etchings are also undated. They were on loan from James Howard Bliss (1894-1977) and his elder brother Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (1891-1975).

Number 107 is 'Portrait of Charles Ricketts' (See for this print blog 436. Charles Ricketts Drawn by Charles Shannon).

Charles Shannon, 'The Hand-Mirror' (drypoint)
British Museum, Number: 1949,0411.450

[© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence]

No. 108 in the catalogue is a genre piece of the morning toilet, called 'The Hand Mirror'. First owned by the Bliss brothers, it was later acquired by Campbell Dodgson who bequeathed it to the British Museum. The museum's website gives a description:

Woman, whole-length in profile to left with head lowered, sitting at a dressing-table with another woman standing behind her and arranging her hair while holding a hand mirror before her. After 1896
Drypoint on thin cream paper

Its dimensions are: height: 152 millimetres and width: 127 millimetres.

The date is not given. It is assumed that the etching was produced later than the closely related lithograph of the same title. This transfer lithograph (190 x 155 mm) was printed in a small edition of eight copies.

Charles Shannon, 'The Hand-Mirror' (lithograph, 1896)
British Museum, Number: 1899,0321.8

[© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence]

In his catalogue of the lithographs of Shannon, Charles Ricketts dates the print to 1896 and he noted: 'This is a transfer  lithograph privately printed as a gift'. He does not mention the existence of the drypoint.

It is actually difficult to say which print was produced first. The portrait of Ricketts is also challenging to date, but I feel it can not be dated to the late 1890s.

Paul Delaney, in his biography of Ricketts, states that Shannon's first attempts at lithography date from 1888, and, what is more, that he came to explore this medium after he had ventured into etching: 'After briefly trying his hand at etching he had taken up lithography [...].' (Charles Ricketts, A Biography, 1990, p. 48). This would mean that the drypoint was done almost a decade before the lithograph with the same title.

791. A First Review of The Collected Letters

Almost a week ago, I received the latest issue of The Book Collector, volume 75, no. 3, Autumn 2026. The magazine contains a review of The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts written by Simon Cook who has published widely about Victorian and modern book art. (See the website of The Book Collector here).

Cover of The Book Collector, Autumn 2026

I usually start at the end of an issue (heading for the ‘News and Notes’ section) and came across the review straight away, as it rounds off this issue (pages 566-569).  

It is encouraging to read that the publication of the letters by Brill, a division of De Gruyter Brill, is regarded as 'extremely useful', 'opening up a range of information that sheds new light on a significant figure', and, as Cooke argues, for some information 'we are privileged to take it from the artist's own mouth'. His conclusion about the publication is: 'Invaluable for the specialist and a cornerstone in all future research, it will also appeal to anyone with an interest in art, the art of the book and publishing.'

Among other things, Cooke discusses the warmth with which Ricketts addresses his correspondents, and, alongside his generous personality, the letters also reveal more about his ‘critical thinking’, for example following his reading of Conrad. Indeed, Ricketts was an avid reader whose interests were wide and up to date, including French and German literature.

Speaking about Ricketts’s book designs, Cooke says: 'Once again, the innovator is revealed to be a traditionalist as much as a creator of a modern style'.

(For those who read every publication, including The Book Collector, with a correction pencil: on page 567, replace ‘Douglas’ with ‘Sydney’, and on page 568, replace ‘1,398’ with ‘2,147’.)

I would like to remind the reader that four letters not included in this edition (because the editors only discovered them later) were published to celebrate the publication of The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts. A few copies of these are still available at the original price; see blog 776 'Published: Four Fugitive Letters'. These are letters written by Ricketts to Cecil French, Martin Birnbaum, Helen Travers Smith & Isabelle Augusta Gregory.

790. Charles Ricketts & Harry Graf Kessler

Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) and Charles Ricketts met a few times, but Ricketts did not particularly like him. Kessler was a German publisher, author, diplomat and art collector whose Cranach Press is considered to be the most elegant and important private press in Germany. His edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1929), with wood engravings by Gordon Craig, is regarded in particular as a modern highlight in the art of book design.

Harry Graf Kessler in 1889
Photo by Leonard Berlin (1841–1931)
[Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Nachlass Harry Graf Kessler]

Shortly after the turn of the century, in 1904, Ricketts wrote in his diary that he had heard from the philosopher Hermann Keyserling that Kessler was quite well known in Germany and ‘immensely rich’. Ricketts was surprised by this: ‘this I had never imagined’ (Diary, 6 May 1904).

During a visit to Berlin in August 1903, Ricketts ran into Kessler – whom he must have met previously, probably in October 1897 – on several occasions at the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. In a letter to Charles Shannon, he makes his discomfort about these meetings clear:

I have bumped against Kessler some 3 times I find that cutting him or being cut by him is undermining my health. He dresses in quite a slatternly way which is nice of him, he is very voluble and eager much more than I am, next to him I am a Piero della Francesca figure.

(The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts, vol. I, p. 217, letter 227).

A year later Ricketts and Kessler corresponded about Maxim Gorki who was arrested during the first Russian Revolution.

In January 1912, Kessler and Ricketts were among the guests of a supper to honour the stage-director Max Reinhardt, and in a letter to a friend Ricketts wrote:

[...] Count Kessler was there also, I am glad to say he is quite bald.

He underlined the last word to emphasise his delight.

(The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts, vol. II, p. 778, letter 736).

Finally, in a letter to the poet and playwright Gordon Bottomley from March 1915, Ricketts wrote about the rehearsal of the London performance of Richard Strauss' opera The Knight of the Rose (Der Rosenkavalier):

Count Kessler who first thought of the plot before a picture of Veronese, is an old personal dislike and enemy of ours in Germany.

(The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts, vol. II, p. 966, letter 905).

In this letter, the animosity is linked to Kessler's support for Post-Impressionism. The elephant in the room.

Kessler himself may well have felt differently, although his diaries reveal no evidence of either antipathy or sympathy. He did mention both Ricketts and Shannon in a relatively short list of English painters whose work appealed to him, when he gave an interview to the Daily Mail:

You have, besides, some most remarkable artists, who are perhaps thought too little of in your own country – men like Wilson Steer, Charles Shannon, Ricketts, Condor, Rothenstein, and young artists of great promise like John Gordon Craig and Wells. […] Even in painting, the brushwork of men like Whistler or Charles Shannon has hardly any rival in our day for its grace and charm.

('German View of Our Art. "Conceived by Gentlemen for Gentlemen." How it is Unique', in Daily Mail, 4 August 1904, p. 2)

Harry Graf Kessler in 1924
Photo: Chevallier Georges
[Musée Albert-Kahn]
[Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

In 1897, Kessler had travelled to London to meet Ricketts. It is not entirely certain whether that meeting actually took place. The reason for his visit was his admiration for Ricketts’s early editions: Daphnis and Chloe (1893) and Hero and Leander (1894). 

Kessler had been working for some time on a new edition of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), which finally appeared in 1908. At first he wanted Ricketts to design the book, then he approached Georges Lemmen who designed a new typeface for the book, and, in the end, Henry van der Velde was responsible for the graphic design.

Both Belgian artists had received samples of the two early Ricketts and Shannon books, as Kessler wanted them to be inspired by the Caslon type that was used. 

By 1897, Ricketts had of course designed his own typeface, the Vale, and published the first books of the Vale Press, but Kessler did not use these as examples for his Nietzsche edition. However, he imitated the Caslon books for a few exhibition catalogues and, remarkably, a 1905 exhibition in Weimar had on display more works from Ricketts and the Vale Press than from the Kelmscott Press, the Eragny Press and the Doves Press: Ausstellung von Werken der Modernen Druck und Schreib Kunst April-Mai 1905. The exhibition was held in April and May 1905 in the Grossherzogliches Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe in Weimar.

789. The Goat Replaces the French Lilies

One of the later, prestigious commissions Charles Ricketts received as a book artist was the design for the binding of the hundred deluxe copies of The Legion Book, which was published in 1929. (See blog 12, 'The Legion Book', 5 October 2011).

The assignment was not entirely unrestricted; for example, the format had already been decided, but the purpose of the publication also influenced the design. The book helped to raise funds for the Royal British Legion, of which Edward, Prince of Wales, acted as a patron - the special edition was not for sale, but held in the gift of the prince.

The client wanted the Legion’s mascot to be featured on the front of the binding, which meant that Ricketts had to adapt the design. The artist had not thought of using that mascot – a goat chosen from the royal herd. 

Charles Ricketts, image of the British Legion mascot 

Ricketts had apparently assumed that a reference to the prince would be appropriate and originally drew a crown and the fleur-de-lis, three French lilies. The sketch of that earlier design is kept in the British Museum’s collection: a drawing in pen and ink with graphite, touched with white bodycolour, on tracing paper, 34,7 x 24,5 cm. The design is slightly larger than the image on the book's cover: 33 x 23,5 cm.

Charles Ricketts, design for the binding of The Legion Book, c. 1929
[British Museum 1962,0809.1.30]
(© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence)

The drawing was given to the museum in 1962 by Riette Sturge Moore (1907-1995), theatre designer, teacher, and interior decorator, daughter of Ricketts's friend Thomas Sturge Moore.

We can see that Ricketts removed the crown and lilies from the dotted circle and inserted a somewhat maliciously looking goat, which, whilst certainly representing a goat’s head, also seems to bear a resemblance to the ‘Cheshire Cat’.

788. Numerals in Vale Press books

David Chambers, whose books were sold earlier this year, owned a copy of the Vale Press edition of Hand and Soul by D.G. Rossetti published in 1899. It was one of those works that, remarkably, were hugely popular at the end of the nineteenth century (just like E.B. Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese). Ricketts’s admiration for Rossetti must have been the reason for yet another edition.

A peculiar typographical error was made in the page numbering, which was noted by the artists and collector Rainforth Armitage Walker, whose copy was part of the Chambers collection. We see his pencilled note on the first free end leaf: 'D.J.C. | 222.54'.

On the same page, Walker had made an ink inscription:

Early copy before error
in Page 39 was discovered

    p. "36" instead of

    p. 39 inversion of 

      figure.

Note by R.A. Walker in D.G. Rossetti, Hand and Soul (Vale Press, 1899)

Walker was not entirely correct. It is true that page 39 is apparently numbered ‘36’ (because the 9 is upside down), but this was not corrected during printing. The later copies printed on vellum also contain the same typographical error. There are therefore no ‘early’ and ‘later’ copies – they all suffer from the same oversight.

However, the mistake was made with a certain consistency, as there is also something peculiar about the facing page number - 38: the 8 is also placed upside down. The upper loop is slightly larger than the lower one, whereas in the design of the number 8 it is always the other way round (if there is any difference at all).

Page numbers 38 and 39 in 

D.G. Rossetti, Hand and Soul (Vale Press, 1899)

Ricketts did not design any numerals for his three typefaces. Nor did Lucien Pissarro for his ‘Brook’ typeface from the Eragny Press. However, William Morris – whom both had taken as their inspiration – had done so for his Kelmscott Press publications. The Doves Press also had its own set of numerals.

Ricketts resorted to a typeface he had used in the so-called ‘Pre-Vale’ editions: Caslon – that is to say, one of the many versions of Caslon. The font is larger than that used in Hero and Leander (1894), for example. It corresponds to that used in the 1893 edition of Daphnis and Chloe.

Some page numbers in 

D.G. Rossetti, Hand and Soul (Vale Press, 1899)

For an artist who strove for unity in book design, it remains strange that Ricketts did not take the trouble or invest the money in creating his own set of numerals.

787. Collected Works in Dust-Jackets

On 13 February 1908, Methuen and Co in London published the first six volumes of what came to be known as the 'First Collected Edition' of the works of Oscar Wilde (which was not truly the first one). The first six volumes were:

The Duchess of Padua. A Play
Salomé. A Florentine tragedy. Vera 

Lady Windermere’s Fan. A Play About a Good Woman

A Woman Of No Importance. A Play

An Ideal Husband. A play

The Importance Of Being Earnest. A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Of each volume one thousand copies were published on handmade paper (bound in buckram)  and eighty copies on deluxe paper called 'Japanese vellum' (bound in vellum). Decorated with gilt designs by Charles Ricketts, the bindings were issued in protective grey-green dust-jackets, printed in green (some copies have brown paper wrappers, not noted by Wilde's bibliographer Stuart Mason [C.S. Millard]). 

Occasionally, sets of the standard or deluxe edition appear in their original jackets, but they are quite rare, especially in good condition. Their colour also makes them difficult to reproduce: I’ve seen both grey and blue copies, but in reality they are all actually a dark grey-green.

Dust-jacket for Oscar Wilde, Intentions and The Soul of Man (1908)

Five more volumes were published a month later, including Intentions and The Soul of Man, followed by Charles Carrington's edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray (April) and Methuen's last volumes Reviews and Miscellanies (both October 1908). 

Ricketts's designs were first used three years earlier for the deluxe editions of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis.

786. Headpiece for Walks in the West End (1891)

Last week's blog was about Charles Ricketts's headpiece for 'The Art World', a signed illustration for the magazine Black and White that had started to appear in February of that year, displaying a masthead drawn by Ricketts. Both, Shannon and Ricketts, would contribute to the magazine. Some of the illustrations in this magazine were signed, some articles mentioned the name of the illustrators with the name of the author or in the captions, and in some cases the names of the artists were listed in the table of contents.

The drawing for the fashion articles 'Walks in the West End' in the four-page supplement for the issue of 16 May 1891 goes without a signature or name. The four larger drawings illustrating dresses were done in a different style altogether. These were the work of several artists: those by 'Dorien' and 'Nemo' are signed and their names are mentioned in the captions underneath, the one by F.H. Townsend is unsigned but equally mentions the artist's name in the caption. 

'Walks in the west End' (Black and White, 16 May 1891)

The headpiece shows a shield bearing the title in an artistic script, surrounded by roses and fashion articles, such as a mirror, a parasol and a fan, objects that we recognise from other headpieces in this sketchy style that Charles Ricketts made for Oscar Wilde's The Woman's World in 1889.

On stylistic grounds alone, we cannot assume that this drawing was also produced by Ricketts, although it bears a strong resemblance to other drawings that he did sign and differs markedly from similar illustrations by other artists in this magazine. His are subtle, even somewhat fairy-tale-like illustrations. However, this particular drawing for the fashion section may, in fact, have been created by another artist, such as his close friend Reginald Savage, with whom he also collaborated on illustrations for Black and White. Their styles are very similar when it comes to this kind of assignment.

Nevertheless, I think that in this case we can attribute the drawing to Ricketts. Firstly, because he produced several such headpieces in the first half-year volume. Secondly, because Savage seemed to specialise in full-page, somewhat romantic illustrations for the magazine, which are always signed – in this volume there were four (14 February 1891, page 62, 7 March 1891, page 141, 14 March 1891, page 193, 9 May 1891, page [429]).

785. Headpiece for The Art World

The weekly magazine Black and White, published from 6 February 1891 onwards, originally displayed a headmast designed by Charles Ricketts. He made quite a few other drawings for the magazine, some of which, oddly, were only published in the late 1890s. Among the earlier ones are eight illustrations done together with Reginald Savage (difficult to determine which artist was responsible for which drawing), a full-page drawing accompanying a poem by John Gray, and there is a headpiece for a series of notices about art written by M.H. Spielmann.

At first, I had marked that last drawing with a question mark because I wasn’t sure whether Ricketts was the artist, until I took another close look at it through a magnifying glass and spotted a tiny monogram.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Art World'
in Black and White, Vol. I, No. 3 (21 February 1891), p. 91

The monogram 'cR' is in the upper right-hand corner, near the head that adorns the ear of the bench that seats three muses holding a scroll. They represent (as the texts indicate) 'Color', 'Poesia' and 'Form'.

Charles Ricketts, monogram for 'The Art World'
in Black and White, Vol. I, No. 3 (21 February 1891), p. 91

The first instalment of 'The Art World' went without a headpiece, and after it was introduced in the second one, it wasn’t used consistently (perhaps due to lack of space). In the first half of 1891, it decorated six out of seventeen of Spielmann's texts.

See earlier blogs about Black and White:
No. 45. Lux, Arts, Spes and Night (6 June 2012)
No. 579. Black and White Stall in 1892 (7 September 2022)

784. About 'The Man Who Was Herod'

The recent number of The Wildean (No. 69, July 2026), to which I referred in earlier blogs, contains an article by Darren J. Sheppard about 'The Man Who Was Herod: Robert de la Condamine ('Robert Farquharson') who lived from 1877 to 1966. Ricketts admired him and did not call him Robin (as he was known to his friends) but Herod.

Cover of The Wildean (No. 69, July 2026)
Detail with image of Robin de la Condamine (Robert Farquharson)
[image edited by Paul Collicutt]

He played Herod in Oscar Wilde's Salome in 1905 and in 1906 (and in 1931). For the 1906 performance Ricketts designed the costumes and set which were greatly appreciated. Roger Fry wrote: 'Charles Ricketts did the staging with ideas of colours that surpassed belief. I've never seen anything so beautiful on the stage'. Ricketts had dressed the cast in every possible shade of blue. 

Farquharson's Herod was, Ricketts said, 'the greatest piece of male acting' he had seen in his lifetime. He told the writers 'Michael Field' that the actor was 'a handsome boy of nineteen with a turned-up nose' (but the actor was 26), and he respected him 'as an artist to the finger-tips with the great gift of abstraction that is the mark of the great artist'. Later, he changed his opinion slightly, and feared that 'he may not have range of genius' . However, he still enjoyed 'his mannered fancy in speech', although he sensed that 'he is false in taste'. 

In 1919, Ricketts wrote to Bottomley that he was 'a remarkable, if unreliable, actor capable of fine things which dont come his way and gifted with imagination of a kind, which does not always tell, doubtless through lack of practice'.

Robin de la Condamine (Robert Farquharson)
in the cast of 'The Story of Cupid and Psyche' (1904)
[Photo edited by Paul Collicutt]

Only one letter from Ricketts to Farquharson seems to have survived and can now be found as number 536 in The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts (volume I, page 565). It was written to thank him for a gift of grapes and contained some gossip.

Sheppard's article provides a welcome insight into the life of the actor, who, thanks to his family’s wealth, did not actually need to work and therefore only took on roles when he felt like it. He often spent the rest of the year in Florence, where his homosexuality was no secret.

Sheppard discusses the three productions in which the actor played Herod, as well as his other roles, his radio performances and his life as a bohemian and a remnant of the spirit of the 1890s.

783. A Salomé Drawing by Charles Ricketts or Max Beerbohm? (a Sequel)

The edition of Oscar Wilde's Salomé with illustrations by Beerbohm, from the collection of Robert Ross, which I previously discussed because of an illustration attributed to Ricketts, continues to harbour secrets. Of course, a certain degree of scepticism is always necessary when examining rare copies of books with handwritten dedications – there are too many forgeries of Oscar Wilde’s works in circulation to remain naive. (See blog 780.) 

I didn’t get any further than the question of whether the drawing with the caption by Ricketts was actually by Ricketts. I said no, but I have to go back on that to some extent. I found it implausible that Beerbohm would first have added numerous drawings, that Ricketts would then have added the final one, and that Beerbohm would subsequently have ‘amended’ that drawing. It’s all too complex to believe. And in reality, the sequence may well have been different and more logical.

Blog 780: 'A Salomé Drawing by Charles Ricketts of Max Beerbohm?' (15 July 2026)

Meanwhile, there are others whose doubts go even further. The Beerbohm expert Mark Samuels Lasner wonders whether the dedication to Robert Ross written by Wilde on the frontispiece is genuine – he thinks not, and has seen a great many dedication copies over the years. Also, he has examined so many inscriptions imitated by Beerbohm that he does not believe the line at the top of the last page is actually in Ricketts’s handwriting, but rather that of Beerbohm himself. In short: in his view, the book contains only original drawings by Beerbohm and no handwritten dedications by Wilde or Ricketts.

Mark Samuels Lasner’s suspicion is also based on the late ‘discovery’ of this copy, which first appeared in a catalogue of The Scribner Book Store in New York in 1941 and was not purchased by two prominent and wealthy Beerbohm collectors, A.E. Gallatin and Robert H. Taylor, but by Edith Eyre, who, for unclear reasons, sold the book on again six years later. There is no long and continuous provenance history, which is always a cause for hesitation.

English Literature. New York, The Scribner Book Store, 1941, No. 225.

Simon Wilson, following the publication of 'The Wilde-Beerbohm-Salomé' in The Wildean (July 2026), decided to have another look at Ricketts’s biography by J.G. Paul Delaney, which I, of course, should have done as well. In it, he found the following passage:

Ricketts did not always admire Beerbohm's caricatures, but roared with laughter at Rossetti and his Circle; he himself did a caricature of Beerbohm scratching his name on the tombs of the great in a book belonging to Robbie Ross, opposite a caricature of Wilde by Beerbohm.

(J.G.P Paul Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A Biography, 1990, p. 49)

Although there are minor discrepancies ('opposite a caricature') and the title Salomé is not mentioned, this seems indeed to refer to the copy under discussion.

Problematic is that this is not a direct quotation from Ricketts, but a paraphrase of an extract from a letter from Ricketts to Thomas Lowinsky. The recent edition of The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts does not include this letter. This is because the Estate of Thomas Lowinsky did not respond to the editors’ requests for access to the original letters, and one had to make do with the typed transcriptions held at the British Library. This letter is not among them.

Delaney's footnote reads: 'CR to TEL, 3 Dec 1917 and [Dec. 1917-Jan. 1918]'. This refers to the original letters in the collection of 'Mr Justin Lowinsky and Mrs Lance Thirkill'.

Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1893)
With original drawings by Max Beerbohm
Caricature of Beerbohm, probably by Charles Ricketts

If we assume that Delaney's paraphrase refers to the Wilde-Beerbohm Salomé, the story of the last drawing in the book takes an unexpected turn. The large drawing on this page, which imitates Ricketts’s Sphinx drawings and incorporates a portrait of Wilde, is indeed the work of Beerbohm.

However, what was previously taken to be a self-portrait of Beerbohm scratching his name into the rocks is in fact Ricketts’s contribution, added with a humorous inscription in 1906, when Ross showed him the book during the production of the English version of Salome, for which Ricketts had designed the costumes.

Frankly, Ricketts keeps amazing me.

782. A Fake Dust Jacket for Oscar Wilde

Prices for first editions of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray have broken record after record over the last quarter of a century. At the time of writing, copies of the ordinary edition are on sale for sums such as US$95,000.00 (with some repair to the original spine) or US$54,995.00 (said to be a 'superb copy') or US$12,000.00 (rebound in a style that mimics the original design) or US$2,500.00 (a rebacked copy).

Fake dust jacket for Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Biblioctopus in Los Angeles (see the website) offers for sale a copy described as 'near fine in the rare dust jacket, with small tears and chips to the spine tips and corners neatly repaired, a bit short (an irregularity with nineteenth-century hand-trimmed jackets), but a charismatic jacket still—integral, clean, and one to be owned with pride'. [See this  link for their catalogue description].

Indeed, the format of the dust jacket is wrong, and there is more. 

The paper is wrong, being white; it should be tan coloured. See the illustration of a copy sold in 2014.

The position of the decoration on the spine is a bit too high, it should be located at 18 mm from the bottom of the spine (whereas on the binding itself it is almost at 2 mm from the bottom of the spine). 

This example, obviously, is a cheap photocopy, which will not be owned 'with pride'. The price is US$75,000.00.

Dust jacket for Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray (19891)
[copy sold by Doyle, 2014]

781. Published: The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts

Last Thursday, 16 July 2026, the print edition of The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts arrived on the doorsteps of the editors in The Hague and in London, almost simultaneously.  

The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts
(Brill, 2026)

The online edition had been published in May, and the printed volumes were ready somewhere in July, they reached us by courier last week. For a description see the website of Brill at The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts (3 Vols).

The Collected Letters of Charles Ricketts
(Brill, 2026)

Some superfluous statistics:

Number of pages: 2273 (each volume also contains xxxix pages of introductory matter)

Number of letters: 2202 (numbered 1-2197, including 5 addenda: 438i, 594i, 806i, 1923i, 2119i)

Number of indexes: 3

Weight: 1535 grams (volume I), 1517 grams (volume II), 1476 grams (volume III)

Number of missing letters: 4

To make up for the last fact, John Aplin and I have published Four Fugitive Letters. To Cecil French, Martin Birnbaum, Helen Travers Smith & Isabelle Augusta Gregory (At the Paulton, June 2026), a lovely booklet of which some copies remain. [To order a copy, please mail me at the address given in the sidebar. See also blog 776 Published: Four Fugitive Letters.]

780. A Salomé Drawing by Charles Ricketts or Max Beerbohm?

The recent number of The Wildean (No. 69, July 2026) contains two articles related to Ricketts in one way or another (the second one will be discussed later).

The first article, written by Simon Wilson, discusses Max Beerbohm’s original illustrations in a first edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (the French edition) from February 1893. This copy came to light last year at Christie’s auction on 22 October 2025, and the price it fetched caused quite a stir: €825,500. Max Beerbohm created an impressive number of original pen-and-ink drawings for it, and the book apparently subsequently passed into Oscar Wilde’s collection, who eventually gave it – with an undated handwritten dedication – to Robert Ross.

Wilson discusses the style of the illustrations, which in places draw on Aubrey Beardsley's imagery, and concludes that they must date from the period between ‘late August 1893’ and ‘mid-1894’.

According to Wilson (and according to the auction house), the final drawing in the book, on the last page, was created by Charles Ricketts. This is based on an inscription on that page:

CR. Member of the society for the protection of | Ancient monuments | 1906

The story goes that Ricketts did not have the final say on the matter: after him, Beerbohm altered the drawing by adding his own self-portrait and having that figure diligently write his name on the Sphinx-like stones.

Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1893)
With original drawings by Max Beerbohm
Drawing ascribed to Charles Ricketts

The date 1906 points – as there are hardly any other plausible reasons – to the first performances of Salome in London in 1906, for which Ricketts designed the costumes and scenery. Robert Ross may have shown the book to him on that occasion.

In order to interpret this inscription and the drawing – clearly a pastiche of one of Ricketts’s line drawings in The Sphinx (June 1894) – a number of questions must first be answered.

Can the inscription be attributed with certainty to Ricketts?

Comparing the handwriting to that of Ricketts, we may conclude that the inscription is in his hand. However, the location of his initials at the beginning, rather than at the end, of the inscription suggests that Ricketts did not sign it as an artist – in which case his initials, CR, would also have appeared elsewhere on the page within the drawing – but as a commentator.

Does the drawing date from the same year as the inscription?

The unusual nature of the inscription, in my view, separates the drawing from the caption. It is not in Ricketts’s nature to add a drawing to a publication that has been made unique by a fellow artist. That aside, we are familiar with satirical sketches by Ricketts and Shannon from their early student days, in which they portrayed one another in odd poses and situations, but a caricature of Oscar Wilde is not an obvious choice. It would be out of character for Ricketts who after the death of Wilde thoroughly realized the genius and humanity of his friend.

Moreover, I see no reason whatsoever to assume that the drawing, entirely in the style of Beerbohm (parodying Ricketts), was not produced before the book was given to Wilde. The Sphinx was published in June 1894, and this date falls within the period in which the other drawings could also have been produced, according to Wilson, who by the way, excludes this drawing from his paragraph about 'The dating of the Beerbohm illustrations' (p. 34-37). This drawing is singled out only on the basis of the dated inscription, but it may be the last drawing in the book simply because The Sphinx was published relatively late in Beerbohm's process of illustrating this copy, and Beerbohm decision to include a parody of it in his copy of Salomé may have been his last intervention before handing the book to Oscar Wilde.

Attributing this drawing to two artists on the basis of an inscription that may be unrelated to it makes dating it unnecessarily difficult: to ensure that both Ricketts and Beerbohm could have produced their work in 1906, complex assumptions have to be made, which are unnecessary without that artistic combination.

Another drawing by Beerbohm

My conclusion would be that all drawings in the book are by Beerbohm, including the portrait of the later Wilde holding a statue of the young Oscar in his lap.

On the occasion of the Salome performances in London, Ross may have shown the book to Ricketts - that would make sense, and Ricketts will have understood and even liked the parody by Beerbohm of his own Sphinx drawings (Ricketts thought they belonged to the best he ever made), and in the course of his conversation with Ross, he may have given his blessing to them by adding his inscription. There was no need for Beerbohm to follow up on this, as his drawings had preceded the inscription. Apart from the inscription, nothing in the drawing on this page of Salomé reveals Ricketts’s craftsmanship, whilst everything in it points to Beerbohm.

779. Queer Bibliography and Dan Williford's website

Nowadays, it is not difficult to find reproductions of books online, even when it comes to less common editions, such as the works of Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. There are blogs, such as this one, and there are vast online databases such as the Internet Archive and HathiTrust, there are antiquarian platforms where one can search for descriptions, complete with illustrations, of second-hand copies on offer, there are national digitisation programmes in many European countries, and there are enthusiasts or scholars who, for various reasons, compile collections of images on the internet – to name but a few examples.

One such collection was started in December 2023 by the American scholar Dan Williford (Daniel Patrick Williford) – see here for his profile page. He introduces himself as

a librarian and instructor at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, where he works in the Alfred R. Goldstein Library supporting research and teaching information literacy and writing for students in art and design disciplines. His work bridges librarianship, book history, and literary scholarship, with particular emphasis on the material and bibliographic afterlives of Oscar Wilde.

Dan Williford, 'Ricketts Bindings'
[accessed 5 July 2026]

His collection of images of the books and magazines of Ricketts and Shannon serves a particular purpose. His focus is on 'queer bibliography', that, in his words, 'examines how acts of collecting, listing, cataloging, and enumerating texts shape the historical record of queer literature'. More information can be found on his blog pages. [See for example: 'Queer Bibliography. An emerging critical field'.]

In 2015, his dissertation The Aesthetic Book of Decadent Literature, 1870-1914 (University of California, 2015) contained a chapter on the Vale Press as a producer of aesthetic books. (I mentioned this in blog 379. Scholarly Attention for Charles Ricketts (4).)

The pages contain copies of antiquarian descriptions, previously published catalogues and bibliographies, and provide quick access to digitised editions. The emphasis is not on new information, but on accessibility. See, for some of his pages on Ricketts: www.danielpwilliford.com and, especially, the page on Resources which provides a thematic index to his website.

Dan Williford, 'Ricketts and Vale Press Bibliography'
[accessed 5 July 2026]

778. Yet More Ricketts books from the Collection of Barry Humphries

It turns out that Barry Humphries’ collection has still not been fully exhausted after several auctions and an antiquarian catalogue; last week, more books were sold at Forum Auctions, some of which, incidentally, had failed to meet the reserve prices at previous auctions and remained unsold.

One of those books was Daphnis and Chloe, for which Ricketts and Shannon worked together on the woodcuts for over a year. The Humphries copy was initially estimated at £800-£1,200, and the lot was passed. On 25 June, the online auction, Fin-de-Siècle, the Gothic and Weird, inc. Further books from the Library of Barry Humphries presented the book as lot 46, now with an estimate of £400 - £600. Hammer price was below the lowest estimate: £340. 

The book has not been preserved in its original green cloth binding. This was a 'contemporary purple morocco with double gilt fillet border and small ornaments to corners'. The binder may have been John Elliott, as an old cataloguing slip, loosely inserted, stated. Also, the binding's condition was not in the best possible condition: 'a little rubbed and faded, particularly spine, top corner of upper cover bumped’. 

'The Vintage at Mitylene',
from Daphnis and Chloe (1893)

Not previously offered from Barry Humpries’ collection was a deluxe copy of Lord de Tabley's Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893) for which Ricketts designed the binding and five illustrations. This is one of a hundred copies bound in full vellum (lot 48).

This copy has the original tissue-guards to the illustrations (although foxed), and while the binding is described as 'slightly rubbed, very slight bowing to covers', the book was estimated at  £200 - £300. It has the bookplate of Muriel A.C. Press, an influential translator of Icelandic saga (1867-1937). Hammer price: £340.

Lord de Tabley, Poems Dramatic and Lyrical (1893):
vellum copy