A Literary Triangle: When Alice B. Toklas Inscribed a Book for Oscar Wilde's Mother-in-Law

There are moments in the rare book trade when a single inscription can illuminate unexpected connections across literary history. Our recent acquisition—a book inscribed by Alice B. Toklas to Adelaide Atkinson—is precisely such a discovery, bridging the bohemian salons of modernist Paris with the tragic romance of Victorian literary scandal.

The Shakespearen Inscription: A Deliberate Message

What makes this inscription truly extraordinary is not merely that Alice B. Toklas dedicated a book to Adelaide Atkinson—it's the lines she chose from Shakespeare and the devastating commentary they offer on Adelaide's treatment of her daughter.

Toklas inscribed the book with passages from two of Shakespeare's plays. From The Two Gentlemen of Verona, she selected:

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than living dully, sluggardiz'd at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."

And from Romeo and Juliet:

"Where unbruised youth, with unstuff'd brain, Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign."

These are not neutral literary ornaments. They speak directly to a tormented and wasted childhood—precisely the kind of childhood Adelaide inflicted upon Constance.

Adelaide Barbara Atkinson holds a particular, if often overlooked, place in literary history as the mother of Constance Lloyd, who married Oscar Wilde in 1884. By all historical accounts, Adelaide was a difficult woman—described by her own son as subjecting Constance to a steady stream of insults and public humiliations, particularly after her husband Horace Lloyd's death in 1874. She kept Constance confined and isolated, denying her the freedom to explore the world beyond their home. This abusive treatment left lasting scars on young Constance, fostering in her a lifelong need for maternal figures and contributing to the fragility that would later define her tragic story.

The choice of Shakespeare's lines about home-keeping youth wasting away in shapeless idleness, and of unbruised youth sleeping peacefully—a state Constance never knew—reads as both reproach and elegy. Was Toklas confronting Adelaide with the consequences of her cruelty? Or was this perhaps a gift given after Adelaide's death, a final statement about the childhood Constance deserved but never received?

Two Literary Worlds Collide

Alice B. Toklas arrived in Paris in 1907, seeking escape from family obligations in San Francisco. There, she met Gertrude Stein, beginning a nearly forty-year partnership that would place them at the epicenter of early 20th-century modernism. Their salon at 27 rue de Fleurus hosted Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and countless other luminaries who reshaped art and literature.

By the time Toklas could have inscribed this book, Adelaide's daughter Constance had already lived through one of literature's most heartbreaking scandals. After Oscar Wilde's 1895 conviction and imprisonment, Constance changed her and her sons' surnames to Holland, fleeing to the continent to escape the stigma. She died in 1898 following complications from spinal surgery, never having reconciled with her exiled husband.

The Power of Provenance

What makes this inscription particularly poignant is the intersection it represents between two very different literary epochs. Adelaide Atkinson belonged to a Victorian world of propriety and concealment, where her son-in-law's downfall was treated as a scandal to be fled from. Toklas and Stein, by contrast, lived openly as partners in a relationship that was an open secret among the artistic elite, hosting a salon where convention was constantly challenged.

The fact that Toklas would inscribe a book to Adelaide suggests either a personal connection or perhaps Adelaide's continued involvement in literary circles despite—or perhaps because of—the family tragedy. Did she seek solace in books after losing her daughter? Did she find in Toklas's world a different model of living authentically, one that her daughter might have wished for in her own marriage?

A Treasure

This inscribed volume joins that rare class of books that transcend their content to become historical artifacts. The inscription connects Oscar Wilde's tragic Victorian love story with the triumphant partnership of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas—reminding us that literary history is not a series of isolated moments but an intricate web of connections, influences, and unexpected friendships.

For collectors of Wilde, Stein, modernist literature, or Victorian literary scandal, this piece offers something truly unique: a tangible link between two of literature's most famous partnerships, one that ended in tragedy and isolation, the other that flourished in the liberating atmosphere of artistic Paris.

It is the human stories behind such inscriptions—the relationships, the gifts, the moments of connection—that transform books from mere objects into windows into lives lived at the intersection of art, scandal, and history.

You can find out more and view images of this dedication at,

www.canonandrare.com

Alice Tolkas Oscar Wilde - Signed - “…The Mother of Mrs Oscar Wilde” | Canon & Rare

TOKLAS, Alice B. An association copy of Smedley’s novel, though himself not related, except as author.Inscribed by Alice B. Toklas and directly addressing choice lines of Shakespeare to Ada Atkinsion - a woman "whose only place in history is for the birth and torment of Constance Wilde" Green cloth on boards. Attractively housed quarter-leather clamshell and rather aptly titled: "PARIS GREEN FOR THE MOTHER OF Mrs. WILDE" A previously unseen and therefore exciting piece of the Wilde history and connection to the left-bank artists of Paris. Description 1858, later edition of Smedley's Frank Farleigh. Toklas inscribed on the seventh page of the book: “Adelaide Atkinson from Alice Toklas”. That it was not on the customary end-paper or title page, the inscription serves to highlight the printed lines immediately following. They’re Shakespeare's verses concerning childhood, adventure, life, grasped or wasted: “…living dully… wear out thy youth…” Undoubtedly this is reference to the abhorrent treatment of Constance in her childhood. Several of the Wilde circle (particularly Constance’s side) later became good friends with Toklas and Stein. It is in this overlap the context of Alice Toklas’ dedication and sympathy for Mrs. Wilde is to be found. In the years following the Wilde scandal, and their deaths, Constance became ‘poor Mrs. Wilde’ in the public mind. While many also withdrew their association, her personal story and childhood abuse by her mother (Adelaide Atkinson) became more widely known and documented. Among the friends of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas were Mina Loy, Arthur Cravan (Wilde's nephew) and Constance Fletcher. Loy especially will have held personal connection. She was Cravan's wife and had also suffered at the hands of her 'jailer-mother'. This is the later, 1858, edition and Smedley has no connection other than the printed lines of Shakespeare at the beginning of his first chapter. Perhaps more loosely, the overall plot of the book. Green cloth on boards. By then Paris Green dye was no longer used by the publishers, but the colour was kept quite similar to that of the very first edition. Unlikely to be the deciding factor in which book Toklas chose to send over to London, but a fitting coincidence nonetheless. Much earlier, the book belonged to Alfred E Clarke, like Constance and Oscar, also from Dublin, Ireland. Clarke emigrated to San Francisco, California. His famous mansion remains in Eureka Valley, to this day an historic landmark to his colourful character. It is not certain though likely that Alice Toklas will have acquired the book after his bankruptcy, and shortly before herself leaving for Paris.