This edition was limited to 500 copies which were signed by John Vassos. Copy being described is number 325.
SALOME / A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT / By / Oscar Wilde / [illustration of Salome's head] / Inventions By / John Vassos / E.P. DUTTON & COMPANY / NEW YORK
268 x 200mm. Bound in full black paper over boards; endpapers with gold and black abstract Deco pattern; text surrounded by silver stars; descriptive text to illustrations (blank on recto, text verso facing illustration) on same stock as text; illustrations printed on coated stock (verso blank); descriptive text and illustration tipped in. There is no difference in materials or organization between the limited and the regular edition. The only difference is that [vi], the copyright notice, also contains the statement," This edition limited to 500 copies of which this is #." Collection PDV.
i blank (no stars) ii blank iii half title iv blank v vignette vi blank vii blank viii frontispiece ix title x copyright notice xi illustrators dedication (to Ruth Carriere) xii blank xv persons in play xvi blank 1 half title 2 blank 3-6 [4] 7-10 [4] 11-14 [4] 15-18 [4] 19-22 [4] 23-28 [4] 29-34 [4] 35-40 [4] 41-44 [4] 45-48 [4] 49-52 [4] 53-56 [4] 57 58 blank 59 vignette (detail of the head of Jokanaan from "following 56") 60 blank = 62 leaves
Same as limited edition
240 x 195mm. Otherwise identical to limited ed. Collection PDV, MN.
Collation identical to limited edition.
This edition contains 13 illustrations including the frontispiece which are not included in the pagination.
viii Frontispiece
Following 6 ...rising from the tomb
Following 10 You look too much at her...
Following 14 The Jews
Following 18 How sweet is the air here (1)
Following 22 I am amorous of thy body, Jokanaan
Following 28 Enter Herod, Herodias, and all the Court
Following 34 I will dance for you Tetrarch
Following 40 I ask of you the head of Jokanaan
Following 44 The executioner goes down into the cistern
Following 48 Bearing on a silver shield the head of Jokanaan (2)
Following 52 I have kissed thy mouth Jokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth
Following 56 Death of Salome
Identical to 1st.
240 x 195mm. In 1930, Salome was reprinted in a new edition with the addition of 4 new plates. Left out was the field of stars along the margins and the small graphic vignettes which were on page [v] and [59] of the 1st edition. Also left out was the illustrator's dedication and the 2nd half-title as well as many of the blank leaves at the beginning and end of the text. The illustrations and text were now printed on the same stock and with the text rather than being tipped-in. Included below the copyright statement was a note, "After 5 larger printings ‘Salome' is now issued in a new edition uniform with Oscar Wilde's ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and ‘The Harlot's House.'" Collection PDV, SUL, CUL, MN.
i half title ii list of other works by Vassos iii blank iv frontispiece v title page vi copyright notice 1 Persons in the play 2 blank 3-4 [4] 5-8 [4] 9-12 [4] 13-16 [4] 17-20 [4] 21-24 [4] 25-28 [4] 29-30 [4] 31-34 [4] 35-36 [4] 37-40 [4] 41-44 [4] 45-46 [4] 47-50 [4] 51-52 [4] 53-56 [4] 57, 58 blank = 64 leaves
Identical to 1st.
235 x 195mm. Collation and position of illustrations identical to Variant 1. Covered in full medium blue bookcloth with black stamping identical to other editions. Collection PDV.
This edition contains 17 illustrations including the frontispiece which are not included in the pagination.
iv Frontispiece
Following 4 ...rising from the tomb
Following 8 You look too much at her...
Following 12 The Jews
Following 16 How sweet is the air here
Following 20 I am amorous of thy body, Jokanaan
Following 24 ...the moon was seeking a dead thing (3)
Following 28 Enter Herod, Herodias, and all the Court
Following 30 I have slipped in blood!
Following 34 I will dance for you Tetrarch
Following 36 Salome Dances (4)
Following 40 I ask of you the head of Jokanaan
Following 44 The executioner goes down into the cistern
Following 46 There is a ... terrible silence (5)
Following 50 Bearing on a silver shield the head of Jokanaan (6)
Following 52 I have kissed thy mouth Jokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth
Following 56 Death of Salome
SALOME / OSCAR WILDE / Inventions By / John Vassos / EPD [logo-type]
John Vassos was known to have designed the bindings and dust-jackets for his works. The front makes use of the same typeface as on the binding and title page set on a vibrant red background with "Deco" elements below. The back abstracts the plot graphically using selected text from the play.
Carries over decor from front with title.
1927: Blank
1930: Plot abstracted graphically, using selected text from the play.
1927: Front "blurb" states that this is "the first time that Wilde's famous play has been illustrated with drawings that were interpretations and not mere decorations...Salome in this specially illustrated edition is admirable as a gift book." Rear "blurb" is advertisement for The Perfect Courtier: Count Baldassare Castiglione by Julia Cartwright.
1930: Front "blurb" states that this is "the first time that Wilde's famous play has been illustrated with drawings that were interpretations and not mere decorations...Salome in this specially illustrated edition is admirable as a gift book." Rear "blurb" contains "some Appreciations of John Vassos' Salome, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Harlot's House." Reviews of this and the other Wilde titles illustrated by Vassos. Reviews include: Edwing Björkman, James Daugherty, Elmer Brown, Jim Tully, and Harry Hansen.
This 1930 edition as well as either edition of the Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Harlot's House were also offered in a boxed set at $10.00. The Syracuse University Library's Department of Special Collections copy of this set contains the 1930 Salome, 1928 Ballad of Reading Gaol, and 1929 Harlot's House.
In E.P. Dutton's 1929 "Catalogue of Publications," the limited edition of 1500 copies of Salome was listed at $10 and the regular edition at $3.50. By 1946, the price had increased to $3.75 for the regular edition and was short-listed. The limited edition ceased being carried by 1936 and is assumed to have sold out. An internal document from E.P. Dutton showing John Vassos' royalties earned, dated June 3, 1933, shows that between June 17, 1930 and April 30, 1933 1584 copies of the regular edition of Salome were sold earning Vassos $316 at $.20 each.(7)
The original artwork of 12 illustrations and a portrait was insured for a total value of $2000, with a limit of $250 per item for a period of 2 months beginning February 4, 1928 while the pieces were in transit or on exhibit.(8)
When it published Salome, Dutton was accused (in a letter dated November 9, 1927 by J.M. Crockett of the Bodley Head, Ltd.) of copyright infringement. John Macrae replied by stating that Salome was never copyrighted in the United States and that it had been reprinted by more than 15 separate publishers to date. He also mentioned a Modern Library reprint using the illustration of Beardsley, and two subsequent reprints of that edition. According to the letter, Dutton's policy was never to be the first to reprint an English copyrighted work, non-copyrighted in the United States, without permission. He argues further that in the case of Salome "no correspondence is necessary for permission... and that it is considered entirely legitimate and proper for an American publisher to reprint a non-copyrighted English book, where it has been reprinted in a pirated edition by someone else." He does concede that he could not sell his (Vassos') edition in England because it would be unlawful.(9)
When Salome was first issued, it was praised very highly in the press, and comparisons were immediately and often drawn to the work of Aubrey Beardsley. These reviews came from both the popular press and smaller, especially college publications.
The Daily
Iowan (Iowa City, n/d) wrote "perhaps Mr. Vassos has arrived at this
feeling for illustration through his work in designing for the theatre, where
the arts of design, drama, and acting are so thoroughly interrelated. Mr. Vassos'
achievement is so far beyond ordinary illustration that he has a good reason for
using a term: his drawing is not remotely representational art. There is
extraordinary life and originality in his work; it is more than merely something
new – a new and pleasant mannerism to be exploited; it is brilliant,
clarifying interpretation; interpretive symbolism that is as new to the world of
illustration as the new genius of stage design was to the theatre ten years
ago." In the review, Vassos' work is compared to that of "fellow
Balkan" Brancusi, because both are considered symbolists and uninterested
in representational art. Vassos' work is considered a collaborative effort
rather than a mere illustration of a text. "The play and Vassos' ‘inventions'
fuse into a completely associated work." Citing Blake as the classic
example of poet and artist, as a complete unity of meaning and design, the
review concludes bysaying that it can find no recent example of where
collaboration has achieved the level of aesthetic harmony achieved by Vassos and
Wilde.
The Minnesota Daily (The University of Minnesota, October 21, 1927) in a brief review compares and contrasts the editions of Salome illustrated by Beardsley and Vassos. "In their own way, they are just as decorative as Beardsley's. Vassos has treated his designs in a modern symbolic, almost cubistic manner. But the passion, the longing, the mad desire of Salome exist in the vivid and spectral inventions of Vassos as they did in Beardsley's black and whites. The poison of the nineteenth century artist is more effective than that of the twentieth. Yet it is difficult to compare the two, for each was interpreting Wilde's play in the light of his own temperament." The review concludes by saying that "this new edition is another fine example of what can be done by printers and illustrators in the production of gift and special editions. The combination of good printing, adequate illustration, and a text of literary value is perhaps the highest goal of the bookmaker."
On October 23rd, 1927, the New York World, in a review titled "Salome's New Dress Fits Her Well," says: "The creator of her fall mode, John Vassos, has not strayed far from the traditions of minimum draperies, but he has clothed her in fancies wholly original and his inventions give singular zest and morbidity to a 1927 issue of the tragic story, from the publishing house of E.P. Dutton & Co." The review continues by making note of several basic "leitmotivs" running "through the pictures like strains musical drama, each identifying a character or a situation and thus impressing the beholder with the interrelation and the cohesion of the story as it progresses... Symbolic art may be searched back to Beardsley for anything as creepy as the pictures of Vassos." It concludes with the remark that "Vassos has of late been "wrestling with the abstract."
The University of Oklahoma Magazine (n/d) wrote of Salome, "before feeling the force of the illustrations, one is impressed by the exterior of the book. The simple dignity of black gold of the cover, the decorations in gold on the black of night within the cover, and then onto the star sprinkled pages of the play! These things are conducive to those moody pages done by Mr. Vassos. They are prologues of atmosphere... Vassos has taken the mode of the futurist, transformed it with curves, and developed the mood of moonlight, stars, and baring emotions to a moving height of artistic excellence. He has embodied a depth that holds his audience engrossed indefinitely. He has allowed for the imagination but with a powerful stroke of suggestion. Through all of them there are the moon waves, haunting, mystic, and moving smoothly into the central figure, pointing it out with an irresistible strength. And it is in these sweeps of curves that he has succeeded in placing the voluptuous moods of the play on paper, and in transporting the same into the feelings of his audience." The review did offer an "adverse comment" however, one that was also echoed in several other reviews. "It lies not in the figure drawing in which he is quite excellent, but rather in the character he has drawn into the face of Salome. It is rather displeasing, the almost modern insipidness underlying her magnificent pose of abandon, the reflection of the cinema in her eyes. This perhaps, disappoints one who has a deeper understanding of Wilde's terrific heroine."
The Forum (no location or date) wrote in December of 1927, "we should not presume to criticize these exquisite drawings on the score of art, except to say that they are conceived in the ultra-ultra manner of the most modern of moderns and that this technique always seems to suggest a mountain wanting to labor and bring forth a mouse, but not knowing quite how to go about it. As illustrations of this particular book, however, Mr. Vassos' drawings may be justly thought inadequate and discordant in that they illustrate not Wilde's Salome, but the artist's. Many will disagree with us in this, but whether one considers Wilde and Vassos as blending into one unit of expression or as expressing two utterly different tempos which must be appreciated as separate exhibits, the truth remains that the volume is one of unusual beauty. The one real defect is that the pages are all sprinkled over with silver stars which give the impression that the text has broken out in violent eczema."
These stars which were only used in the 1927 edition, led The Nation (January 25th, 1928) to describe Salome as follows. "Mr. Vassos' ‘inventions,' or drawings appearing as they do opposite pages of text bespattered with gilt stars, are stale with eighteen-ninetyism and only impotently flamboyant. "
The San Francisco Chronicle, on October 30, 1927, expressed a similar opinion when it wrote, "no work of book making could be much worse. I mention the book merely to work. I mention the book merely to direct attention to it as an example of thoroughly bad taste. It is garish, grotesque. The inventions, as they are called in the title, are merely symbolic illustrations. The blurb says they are symbolic, but of what is hard to say; probably of scortatory love; but they are quite harmless. Myriads of silver stars dot the margins of the text pages, and serve the useful purpose of turning the eye away from the poor typography. The blurb also says that this edition is admirable as a gift book." (10)
In a more scholarly article published in the July 1928 issue of the University of California Chronicle, Merritt Hughs wrote about the "Immortal Wilde," examining him and his writings from an art historical and literary historical perspective. Hughs writes, "whether Vassos has availed himself of Carillo's (Gomez Carillo, Spanish contemporary and acquaintance of Wilde) recollections of Wilde is not revealed. His Salome is naked, absolutely naked, but she is not strewn with jewels, and that, in the light of the part which gems play in the drama and of Wilde's consuming passion for precious stones, is rather a pity. Perhaps Vassos' limitation of himself to black and white, and gray explains his abnegation of those myriad glittering reflections on the unchaste, amber flesh. Away from the footlights, in the private theatre of our own imaginations, it may be possible to approve his amendment of Wilde's vision, but it is hard not to agree with Wilde that the gems are a part of the personality of a Salome who is not a tool. Perhaps Vassos rightly feels that Salome's rejections of a king's ransom in gems in the tragedy as Wilde actually wrote it should banish them altogether from her personality. All candid observers will admit that he has allowed her flesh to lose none of its unchastity in spite of its loss of glittering highlights."
Hughs claims that "Beardsley's drawings embodied the taste of two artists who were enamored of the splendor as well as of the moral decadence of the later Caesars. They are a reflection of Wilde's ‘Neronic period' and they mysteriously unite the artistic ideals of the statuary of Imperial Rome with those of the English Pre-Raphaelites."
"A glance at Vassos' drawings shows that he has deliberately sacrificed the prevailing voluptuous splendor of Beardsley's illustrations. In doing so he has probably come closer than Beardsley did to Wilde's dream, as in retrospect he thought that he had dreamed it, but he is not so close to Beardsley as to the dream itself. Vassos take the magnificence of Herod's court for granted, just as he takes its lust and cruelty very frankly for granted, but he overshadows it with the common magnificence of moonlight and of a skyey perspective from which we grandly survey all the persons in the play sub specie aeternitatis."
Hughs also comments on the border of stars, which were used in the 1st edition of Vassos' Salome, writing "glimpses of the moon and stars are a part of Salome and no illustrator of the play should neglect them. It would not be fair to Vassos, however to suggest that he intends any metaphysical implication by his symbolically expansive sky above Wilde's marionettes. The only divinity clearly present in Vassos' ‘inventions' is Aphrodite, the destroying Aphrodite who set her mark on Euripedes' Phaedra. Hers is the only Providence whose inscrutable ways Vassos maps distinctly in the curved space of his drawings." Continuing, Hughs writes, "the moon and stars are not obvious emblems to apply to the illustrations of Wilde's play, yet Vassos rightly uses them. Infinite pools of moonlight fall through the heavens to realize the speech of the Page of Herodias, made as the drama opens. "How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. He is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for a dead thing."
Every page of the volume is powdered with stars. They cluster athwart every page into a vortex, a Milky Way, in which our world and the tiny action of the drama are soon imagined as being tossed. This moonlight and this starshine have their symbolic relationship to Salome, but it is not transcendental." (11)
Daily Oklahoman - No date, photo of Vassos with review by Helen C. Carpenter.
Harvard Advocate - No date, review by C.A.
Hunter College Bulletin - No date, review.
Louiseville Courier - No date, illus following pg. 44, review by F.J.G.
The Columbia Jester - October, 1927, illus following pg. 50, review by R.C.
The Daily Maroon - U. of Chicago, October 21, 1927, review.
Detroit News - October 30, 1927, illus following pg. 16.
Buffalo Arts Journal - Nov. - Dec. 1927, illus following pg. 44.
The Longhorn - November, 1927, review by J.P.
Wells College Chronicle - November, 1927, review by Dorothy Jay.
The Clark Monthly - November, 1927, review by Bertrand Leveue.
NY Evening Post - November 5, 1927, illus following pg. 50.
Philadelphia Record - November 5, 1927, illus following pg. 12 with review.
Chicago Daily News - November 9, 1927, mention.
Evening News-Index - (Evanston, IL), November 9, 1927, review by Spencer Williamson with illustration of Vassos.
Official Met Guide - November 11.1927, review.
The Daily Illini - U. of Illinois, November 12, 1927, sketch of Vassos.
Columbia Missourian - November 19, 1927, review.
The Crimson Bookshelf - November 19, 1927, review by E.A. with sketch of Vassos.
The Daily Northwestern - November 19, 1927, review by R.E.W.
Milwaukee Journal - November 24, 1927, illus following pg. 44 with review.
Barnard College Barnacle Quarterly - December, 1927, Rrview by Valerie Frankel.
The Carolina Magazine - December, 1927, review by D.S.G.
The Columbia Varsity - December, 1927, review by G.C.R., Jr.
New York Times Book Review - December 4, 1927, illus following pg. 50.
Philadelphia Inquirer - December 10, 1927, review by Sidney Williams.
Omaha (NE) World Herald - December 18, 1927, review.
Jacksonville (IL) Journal - December 18, 1927, review by John Kearns.
New Orleans ??? - January 15, 1928, mention.
New York Herald-Tribune - January 15, 1928, illus following pp. 50 and 16, with review by Ben Ray Redman.
Charlotte (NC) News - January 29, 1928, review by J.P.S.
The Archive (New York University) - March 1928, review by T.J.S., Jr.
The Spur - April 15, 1928, illus following pg. 8.
New York Telegram - July 11, 1930, Iilus following pg.50 with mention.
Hartford Daily Courant - July 13, 1930, review.
Rocky Mountain News (Denver) - July 13, 1930, review.
Boston Sun Advertiser - August 3, 1930, illus following pg. 30, with review.
New York Times Book Review - August 10, 1930, review. (12)
1. In my copy the plate and the descriptive text were tipped-in in the reverse order.
2. An earlier version of this illustration was published in a souvenir theater program in 1926. Vassos, John. Contempo, Phobia and other Graphic Interpretations. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1976. Page .
3. Ibid. Titled "Death of the Young Syrian" no. 10.
4. Ibid. Titled "Dance of the Seven Veils," no. 12.
5. Ibid. Titled "Execution of Jokanaan," no. 14.
6. Ibid. An earlier version of this illustration was published in a souvenir theater program in 1926. no. 15.
7. E.P. Dutton Papers, Box 55, Vassos, John and Ruth, Correspondence. John Vassos: Royalty Earned and Deductions to Apr. 30, 1933. June 2, 1933.
8. E.P. Dutton Papers, Box 55, Vassos, John.
10. E.P. Dutton Papers, Box 55, Vassos, John, Reviews - Salome
11. Hughs, Merritt Y. The Immortal Wilde. The University of California Chronicle. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1928. Vol XXX, no. 3, pp. 305-324.
12. E.P. Dutton Papers, Box 55, Vassos, John, Reviews - Salome
