Theatre: Plays
James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles-lettres. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when they were most popular.
His 1921 play, The Jewel Merchants is set in early sixteenth-century Tuscany and explores the moral lassitude and selective ethics of a coterie of businessmen. It's a thoroughly entertaining look at a past culture that is sure to tickle readers' funny bones.
New York; Robert M. McBride & Company, 1921. Limited edition, no. 589 of 1,040. Brown cloth with gilt decoration on cover; spine lettering faded; endpapers tanned; deckled edges; binding tight; text clean. G+
New York: Random House, 1954. 1st edition. Adapted by Maurice Valency. Signed by 18 cast members, with a signed letter from actress Marian Seldes laid in. Dust jacket protected; light wear to edges and corners; tan cloth with photo of Audrey Hepburn inlaid on front cover; very light foxing to rear inside flap; slight cant to volume; text clean. G+/G+
Published by Contemporary Play Publications; Volume II, no. 4, October 1938. Contents: Plays: "The Jar," Luigi Pirandello; "Don't You Want To Be Free," Langston Hughes; Television Script: "It's Really Quite Simple," Harold L. Anderson; Film Sequence: "Blockade," John Howard Lawson; Departments: Music in the Theatre - One Act Opera, Paul Rosenfield; The Theatre, John W. Gassner. Wraps, stapled; covers have water stains, remnants of tape; corners creased; spine missing 1" from bottom; tear at top of spine/front cover; pages slightly tanned. G-
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1901. 1st edition; no dust jacket; ornately decorated gray-blue cloth with gilt lettering; illustrated end papers; 22 tipped-in color plates with tissue guards; half-title lightly foxed; first signature loose with some creasing to the pages; text clean. G
Philip Barry is best known today as the playwright who created two of the defining comic roles of Katharine Hepburn’s career: Tracy Lord, the haughty rich girl who sails through “The Philadelphia Story” on a soft breeze of wealth, beauty and privilege, and Laura, the down-to-earth heiress ill at ease with her wealth who captures Cary Grant’s heart in the 1938 George Cukor film, “Holiday.” (Washington Times, July 4, 2003). These two smash hits, as well as six other plays, are included in this handsome volume, along with an illuminating biographical essay by Brendan Gill.
1st edition; scarce; dust jacket in protective cover; slightly creased at top edge; dark blue cloth with silver lettering on spine; slightly faded at top edge; text clean and bright; binding good. VG/VG
Generally agreed to be one of the most significant forces in the history of the American theater, O'Neill is a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in literature for 1936. He won one of his Pulitzer prizes for Strange Interlude. The play exemplifies O'Neill's ability to explore the limits of the human predicament, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences' hearts and it was probably the furor of discussion aroused by the novelty both of theme and treatment in Strange Interlude that made O'Neill's name known wherever the English-speaking stage is discussed.
Boni & Liveright, 1928. Dust jacket in protective cover; attractive but tattered dj with repaired tear and missing chunk at top of spine; dark green cloth with lettering in gilt and decoration in light blue; decorated endpapers; binding good; text clean. G+/G-
Paul Claudel (1868-1955) was the author of numerous plays and several volumes of poetry.
Yale University Press, 1919. 1st edition. Translated from the French by John Strong Newberry. No dust jacket; dark gray cloth over gray boards; title and author on paper label on spine; front cover has one stained area; endpapers foxed; binding tight; some pages uncut; deckled edges; text clean. G
New Directions, 1964; 1st edition; dust jacket in protective cover; spine edges lightly creased and chipped; light blue cloth; top edge faded; former owner's signature on ffep; binding tight; text clean; jacket design by Alvin Lustig. G+/G+