DA THE STAR
The Wilde side of life is worth a fortune
A LETTER from Oscar Wilde to his colourful Sheffield-born publisher is set to fetch
up to £6,000 when it is auctioned later this month.
In the 150-word letter, which the witty Victorian writer posted from France to Sheffield-born Leonard Smithers on March 15, 1898, Wilde says: "There are only two forms of writers in England, the unread and the unreadable."
Leonard Charles Smithers, son of dentist John Smithers, was born at Infirmary Road, Sheffield, in December 1861. By the time he was 10 the family were living at 385 Infirmary Road, with live-in servants named Catherine Layland and Ellen Cordon.
Smithers was in his 30s and living in London when he received the letter from Wilde which is coming up for sale at Bonhams in London on March 23.
Smithers had been educated at Wesley College For The Law in Sheffield and started his working life as a solicitor with the Sheffield law firm Meredith, Roberts and Mills, before he made an unusual career move by becoming a publisher of saucy books.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "although Smithers gained his livelihood for a time as a solicitor, he was far more interested in books and art than in the legal profession.
"In his spare time he rummaged through the bookstalls and haunted the antiquarian bookshops of Sheffield and its environs, increasingly adept at ferreting out the odd rarity that he could afford. Books of erotica appear to have been his major interest."
Eventually, in the late 1880s, when he was in his late 20s, Smithers set up - with the help of a young Sheffield printer and book dealer named Harry Sidney Nichols - the Sheffield-based Erotika Biblion Society.
This was so successful Smithers and Nichols moved the business to London where their bookshop was at Wardour Street, off Oxford Street, while the printing business was in Soho.
There they continued to produce erotic books.
In 1897, renowned book man Bernard Quaritch described Smithers as the "cleverest" publisher in London.
How and when Smithers first met Oscar Wilde is a mystery, but there is no doubt Wilde was a fan.
He said of Smithers that he wore ties "delicately fastened with a diamond brooch of the impurest water - or perhaps wine, as he never touches water: it goes to his head at once".
He added: "He is also a delightful companion and a dear fellow, very kind to me."
In February 1898 - the year after Oscar Wilde's release from Reading Jail, where he had been imprisoned for two years for homosexual offences - Smithers published The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde's epic poem inspired by his spell in jail.
The poem was promptly derided by a one-legged poet and critic named William Ernest Henley - the real-life inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island character Long John Silver - who sneeringly dismissed The Ballad as a jumble of "excellence and rubbish".
Wilde was understandably less than amused and, in the letter to Smithers coming up for sale, wrote: "I don't think I should answer Henley... I think it would be quite vulgar - what does it matter... he is secretly jealous...
"Besides there are only two forms of writer in England, the unread and the unreadable - Henley belongs to the former class."
Sadly, at the time Smithers received the letter, he was just two years from downfall. He was declared bankrupt in September 1900, and illness drove him to drink and drugs.
He died in poverty on his 46th birthday on December 19, 1907, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fulham.
He left just £99, and was survived by his wife Alice and 16-year-old son Jack.
A LETTER from Oscar Wilde to his colourful Sheffield-born publisher is set to fetch
up to £6,000 when it is auctioned later this month.
In the 150-word letter, which the witty Victorian writer posted from France to Sheffield-born Leonard Smithers on March 15, 1898, Wilde says: "There are only two forms of writers in England, the unread and the unreadable."
Leonard Charles Smithers, son of dentist John Smithers, was born at Infirmary Road, Sheffield, in December 1861. By the time he was 10 the family were living at 385 Infirmary Road, with live-in servants named Catherine Layland and Ellen Cordon.
Smithers was in his 30s and living in London when he received the letter from Wilde which is coming up for sale at Bonhams in London on March 23.
Smithers had been educated at Wesley College For The Law in Sheffield and started his working life as a solicitor with the Sheffield law firm Meredith, Roberts and Mills, before he made an unusual career move by becoming a publisher of saucy books.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "although Smithers gained his livelihood for a time as a solicitor, he was far more interested in books and art than in the legal profession.
"In his spare time he rummaged through the bookstalls and haunted the antiquarian bookshops of Sheffield and its environs, increasingly adept at ferreting out the odd rarity that he could afford. Books of erotica appear to have been his major interest."
Eventually, in the late 1880s, when he was in his late 20s, Smithers set up - with the help of a young Sheffield printer and book dealer named Harry Sidney Nichols - the Sheffield-based Erotika Biblion Society.
This was so successful Smithers and Nichols moved the business to London where their bookshop was at Wardour Street, off Oxford Street, while the printing business was in Soho.
There they continued to produce erotic books.
In 1897, renowned book man Bernard Quaritch described Smithers as the "cleverest" publisher in London.
How and when Smithers first met Oscar Wilde is a mystery, but there is no doubt Wilde was a fan.
He said of Smithers that he wore ties "delicately fastened with a diamond brooch of the impurest water - or perhaps wine, as he never touches water: it goes to his head at once".
He added: "He is also a delightful companion and a dear fellow, very kind to me."
In February 1898 - the year after Oscar Wilde's release from Reading Jail, where he had been imprisoned for two years for homosexual offences - Smithers published The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde's epic poem inspired by his spell in jail.
The poem was promptly derided by a one-legged poet and critic named William Ernest Henley - the real-life inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island character Long John Silver - who sneeringly dismissed The Ballad as a jumble of "excellence and rubbish".
Wilde was understandably less than amused and, in the letter to Smithers coming up for sale, wrote: "I don't think I should answer Henley... I think it would be quite vulgar - what does it matter... he is secretly jealous...
"Besides there are only two forms of writer in England, the unread and the unreadable - Henley belongs to the former class."
Sadly, at the time Smithers received the letter, he was just two years from downfall. He was declared bankrupt in September 1900, and illness drove him to drink and drugs.
He died in poverty on his 46th birthday on December 19, 1907, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fulham.
He left just £99, and was survived by his wife Alice and 16-year-old son Jack.
