Will the real Earnest please step up?
A Soho man claims that he has owned a rare first edition of Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” for nearly 30 years, but that his attempt to auction it failed after a British man declared the book stolen, according to a lawsuit.
Elia Zois says in his Manhattan Supreme Court suit that he bought the book, one of just 12, in 1985. It is signed by Wilde, who gave it to friend Frances Forbes-Robertson in 1899, he says.
But when Zois put the book up for auction at Sotheby’s in December for up to $150,000, Englishman Henry Harrod claimed it as his own, identifying Forbes-Robertson as his grandma, the suit says. He couldn’t be reached for comment.