[Millard, Christopher Sclater] "Stuart Mason".

Willis Vickery, book-label. Volumes from the library of Willis Vickery were sold by Anderson Galleries in 1933 and 1935.

The full title (and subtitle) is A Bibliography of the Poems of Oscar Wilde Giving Particulars as to the Original Publication of each Poem, with Variations of Readings and a Complete List of all Editions, Reprints, Translations, &c.

Christopher Sclater Millard (1872-1927), a graduate of Keble College, Oxford and Salisbury Theological College converted to Catholicism and became a schoolmaster in Bournemouth, later becoming head of St Catherine's College in Woodford Green.

Millard's first publication, published while he was at Oxford, was a translation of an André Gide essay, appearing under the pseudonym Stuart Mason. For a time he worked as secretary to Robert Ross and, later, as an assistant editor for the Burlington Magazine. His bibliography of Wilde appeared in 1914 (see next lot).

Millard served in France with the Royal Fusiliers for a time before his health failed. Whilst working as a record clerk at the War Office he was jailed for the second time for homosexuality. He had, previously, received a three-month sentence in 1906 for gross indecency.

In the 1920s Millard turned to dealing in books (stating to Anthony Powell that it was "a sordid business selling books, but very amusing.") Powell was, later, to use Millard as a part-model for the character of Edgar Deacon in A Dance to the Music of Time.

Mason notes that the portrait of "Oscar Wilde in the Year he won the Newdigate" (facing p.16 in this volume), "...is a recent drawing from a photograph and the inscription is a forgery. As many copies as possible were called in and the illustration cancelled." The copy offered here includes this uncancelled illustration.